Following an emotional Derby win, Baffert shoots for Preakness record

Bob Baffert had run in the Kentucky Derby 19 times previously, and had won it five times, but the lead-up to this year’s race, he said, felt different. How could it not? The Derby was being run four months after it was originally scheduled, owing to a pandemic, in a city riven by the police killing of a woman in her home months earlier.

“It didn’t feel like the Derby,” Baffert said, “until the gates opened. Then it felt like it. It was on.”

A little more than two minutes later, Baffert’s lone remaining runner, Authentic, had won the Derby, giving Baffert a record-equaling sixth victory in the race. About 20 minutes earlier, his other entrant, Thousand Words, had flipped in the paddock, sending assistant Jim Barnes sprawling, leaving Barnes with an arm fractured in eight places that subsequently required a plate and nine screws to repair, and causing Thousand Words to be scratched.

Baffert watched the Derby in his usual spot, in the paddock, where a large video monitor is above the saddling stalls. When the race ended, his wife, Jill, broke down in his arms. His youngest son, Bode, excitedly did a lap around the paddock, his arms outstretched. When Baffert was interviewed on television moments later, he got choked up.

“It was very emotional for me,” Baffert said in a recent interview at Santa Anita. “To me, it felt like winning the Derby for the first time. I was sick about what happened to Jimmy. He’s like a brother of mine, and I like to share the credit with him.”

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And then, as a coda to the proceedings, Baffert was knocked down in the winner’s circle when Authentic wheeled when the blanket of roses was draped across his back.

“I just had to tuck and roll. I knew it was going to be embarrassing, but I said, [screw] it,” Baffert said. “I guess I’m the only trainer to get knocked on his [butt] in the Derby winner’s circle.”

A text he got that evening from a retired racing writer, he said, perfectly summed it up.

“Congrats,” it read. “You went to hell and back in 30 minutes.”

Now it’s on to the Preakness, with both Authentic and Thousand Words among the field of 11 entered in Saturday’s race at Pimlico. Baffert has won the Preakness seven times previously, and an eighth win would have him standing alone as the race’s winningest trainer.

All five of his previous Derby winners have come back to win the Preakness, and two more who were beaten in the Derby, all returning on two weeks’ rest. That’s indicative of the preparation Baffert requires of his horses going into the Derby. They are fit for that race, and don’t bounce coming back on short rest.

That demanding training schedule was on display with Authentic, whose ability to succeed at 1 1/4 miles had been in question. From Aug. 13 through Aug. 30 at Del Mar, Authentic worked six furlongs, then six furlongs six days later, then a mile six days later, then another six furlongs five days after that, each work actually a bit longer owing to requisite gallop-outs. No other horse came into this year’s Derby with that kind of training regimen, 26 furlongs of credited work crammed into 18 days.

“You can only do that if you have a good horse who’s a willing worker,” Baffert said.

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The suggestion was made that Authentic winning the Derby might have been his greatest training feat.

“Gold Coast Express,” he replied.

Gold Coast Express was the first of Baffert’s two wins in the Champion of Champions, Quarter Horse racing’s year-end major race at Los Alamitos that’s the equivalent of the Breeders’ Cup Classic for Thoroughbreds, at the sport’s classic distance (440 yards vs. 1 1/4 miles) for the year’s best older runners.

Gold Coast Express in 1986 raced Aug. 2, Aug. 21, Aug. 30, Sept. 20, and Oct. 4. Baffert then trained him into the Champion of Champions, and brought him off a two-month layoff to win the race on Dec. 6. Similarly, with Authentic, Baffert brought him into the Derby fresh after a victory seven weeks earlier in the Haskell.

When he was first making the transition to Thoroughbreds in the late 1980s, Baffert said he “watched Charlie Whittingham do it.” He applied what he knew about training Quarter Horses off layoffs, overlaid that with paying attention to how the best trainer at Santa Anita did it, and evolved.

He’s become the sport’s most successful trainer in Triple Crown races, with 16 wins.

This year, the Preakness, traditionally the middle jewel of the five-week Triple Crown season, is the final leg of a Triple Crown that began more than three months ago with a truncated Belmont Stakes.

“It’s going to be a tough race,” Baffert said. “Art Collector looks really good.”

As with the Derby, the Preakness likely won’t feel like the Preakness, either. As at the Derby, the general public is not permitted, robbing the race of its party-like atmosphere. But when the gates open, it’s on.