Baffert: New $3.65 million Curlin colt a ‘wow horse’
Not long removed from a 1-2 finish by Roadster and Game Winner in the Santa Anita Derby (G1), Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert wondered this week, speaking to Steve Byk’s At The Races radio show, if something similar could be ahead for a pricy colt set to come into his care.
Coolmore went to $3.65 million on March 27 at Gulfstream Park’s Fasig-Tipton sale of 2-year-olds for a son of Curlin out of a Bernardini mare named Achieving.
“Hopefully we’ll be talking about him this time next year,” Baffert told Byk, insinuating we’ve already got one to follow looking ahead to the 2020 Kentucky Derby.
In the sale as Hip 173, the colt, consigned by Jimmy Crupi’s Crupi’s New Castle Farm, breezed a furlong in 10 seconds flat.
“He was a wow horse,” Baffert told Byk. “Man, he was just — he did something he’s not supposed to do. He’s bred to go a mile and a quarter and all that. He had speed on that track. Did it the right way.”
Baffert reported that the colt — who’s “not a horse that’s going to be running 5 1/2 or anything like that” — went to Coolmore’s Ashford Stud in Versailles, Ky., following his purchase, which represented a record price for a juvenile at that sale.
“I don’t think anybody was really shocked,” Fasig-Tipton President Boyd Browning said of the price. “You could sense and feel that he was a special colt.”
We'll learn of a name later, and based on potential alone, here’s a candidate for your virtual stable.