Kentucky Derby: Medina Spirit is Baffert's final hope this year

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The cameras and tape recorders were waiting, and Bob Baffert was ready. His last horse scheduled to train Monday morning, Charlatan, returned from the track, clomped back into the shed row, and Baffert framed himself in front of the cameras, setting a backdrop of six plaques hung on the barn wall bearing the names of the Kentucky Derby winners he has trained.

Some trainers thrust into the spotlight shun the media, maybe even scorn it. Baffert revels in the attention, and with 33 Derby starters in 20 Derbies, more Derby wins than any trainer save Plain Ben Jones, who also won six, he gets plenty. Monday morning the quips rolled, the cameramen laughed on cue, and Baffert, no need to sugarcoat anything at this stage of the game, spoke frankly about the horse he has sent to Louisville seeking Derby No. 7, Medina Spirit.

“I think he’s a top 10. Usually, I come in here with a top 5,” Baffert said. “Things are going to have to go his way if he’s going to get there.”

Medina Spirit has two wins and three seconds from five starts. He won the Jan. 30 Robert Lewis Stakes at Santa Anita by a neck after setting a fast pace over a deep, laboring track and staving off multiple late challengers. The race before, the Sham Stakes, he’d come within three-quarters of a length in the of beating Life Is Good, Baffert’s fastest Triple Crown hope of 2021. But Life Is Good thumped Medina Spirit in the March 6 San Felipe, winning by eight lengths, and as the odds-on favorite last month in the Santa Anita Derby, Medina Spirit got smoked by first-time dirt starter Rock Your World.

“His last race, it was okay, but I don’t think he brought his A game,” Baffert said.

To hear “Plain Talk” Baffert expound on his Derby runner Monday, Medina Spirit’s A game might make him only a B Derby prospect. The colt is very good, but, seemingly, not elite of the elite. “He runs hard every time. He’s got a huge heart – does not want to lose,” Baffert said.

Life Is Good looked like Baffert’s top Derby hope but suffered an injury that took him off the Triple Crown Trail. Freedom Fighter, 2-1 in the March 6 Gotham, finished a fading fourth – distance limitations. Concert Tour still seemed a serious threat. The son of Derby-winning sire Street Sense aired in the March 13 Rebel, his first two-turn contest, but came home a flat third April 10 in the Arkansas Derby. Days later, Baffert withdrew him from Derby consideration. Medina Spirit was the last Derby hope left.

These days, Baffert, Mr. Derby, gets sent many of the most expensive unraced 2-year-olds in North America. Medina Spirit is not one of those. Sent to auction in January 2019 at a Florida sale as a so-called “short yearling” – meaning he’d just officially turned 1 – Medina Spirit fetched a whopping $1,000. He is a son of the young sire Protonico, a Todd Pletcher-trained runner who could pop a big race but struggled to stay sound.

“I know Protonico,” Baffert said. “I used to run against him.”

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Oussama Aboughazale, who races here as Sumaya U.S., campaigned Protonico and stands him at stud. Aboughazale and Amr Zedan, who has been spending millions on auction horses the last couple years, have a lifelong friendship, and Aboughazale encouraged Zedan, Baffert, and bloodstock agent Gary Young to take a look at the Protonico colt when he was resold as a 2-year-old at a 2020 sale.

“Gary Young, he liked him all right. We thought he was going to bring like $50,000,” Baffert said.

Zedan bought the colt for $35,000, and the favor he did to support his friend’s stallion has rewarded him with his first Derby starter.

For Baffert, Derby runner No. 34 meant, as much as anything, he was back at Churchill Downs, engaging in a rite of spring that seems to fill him with life.

A masked man aimed a tape recorder Baffert’s direction and asked about his roller-coaster of a 2021 Derby trail. “Every year’s a roller-coaster in this sport,” he shot back.