Baltas emerges from struggles for big summer at Del Mar
Trainer Richard Baltas is having a summer to remember at Del Mar.
Entering the final week of the meet, Baltas has saddled 16 winners from 83 starters to put him just two victories behind Doug O'Neill for the training title lead. The stable is also on target to accrue more than $1 million in purse earnings in just under two months of racing at Del Mar.
The 58-year-old from Gary, Ind. has come a long way in the past seven years. It's been decades in the making.
According to Equibase, Baltas' training career dates back to 1991, when he had three winners from 36 starters for earnings of $34,365. Over the next 13 seasons, the Baltas barn earned more than $230,806 just once That came in 2001, when Grade 2 winner Freedom Crest led the stable to $668,970 in earnings.
Baltas has always been well-respected among horsemen. He figures the reason for the newfound success lies at the heart of the game: faster horses.
“I'm just getting a better quality of horse,” said Baltas, who estimates he has about 100 runners split between Del Mar and the San Luis Rey Downs training center. “So what I'm trying to is focus on the barn itself and then do to what's right for the horses. Sometimes they're ready to run. Sometimes they're not.”
In 2019, Baltas shows 60 winners from 299 starters with earnings of $4.6 million. To get faster horses usually requires deeper-pocketed owners, and that's been the case for Baltas. He has several high-profile owners among his client base, including Michael Nentwig, Slam Dunk Racing and Little Red Feather, to name a few.
Baltas reflected on his rise over the past half decade.
“It has changed my life, of course,” Baltas said. “But I've always done this because I loved it. It's like I tried to tell my wife before we were married, and I've been married eight years. I was like, 'I've been struggling for a lot of years.' I had trained horses at different times and things were difficult.
“You know, I can only say it's the clients. And you got to win races.”
While better bloodstock certainly helps, Baltas also continues to ply his trade in finding hidden gems at auction and in the claim box. Freedom Crest is just one former Baltas claim that went on to stakes success. This season, he has a colt named Ginobili set for the Del Mar Futurity that Baltas plucked for $35,000 at Keeneland's September auction. The son of Munnings beat a highly-regarded maiden field at Del Mar in his second start on Aug. 17.
“He's doing good, so we might go back in the Futurity,” Baltas said. “I know it's short rest, but it looks like he bounced out of it pretty good so we are leaning that way.”
Ginobili is owned by a partnership that includes Baltas, Slam Dunk Racing, Jerry McClanahan and Nentwig.
Baltas also gave updates on a few other of his notable runners. Five-year-old gelding Two Thirty Five, who won Del Mar's one-mile Harry Brubaker on Aug. 21, was mentioned as a possible starter in the Awesome Again Stakes (G1) at Santa Anita. Baltas didn't sound too keen on such a prospect.
“The way he ran the other day he beat a pretty good field,” Baltas said. “But he'd have to be doing very, very good to run there.'
Queen's Plate winner One Bad Boy is also in the Baltas barn, and it appears his season may be over. The son of Twirling Candy was injured when running third in the Prince of Wales Stakes at Fort Erie on July 23.
“He came back from Canada and had wrenched his ankle a little bit, so I backed off him,” Baltas said. “I'll probably give him a couple months off and get him ready for next year.”
While it's been a charmed summer for Baltas, don't expect things to slow down when the doors lock at Del Mar.
“I have a lot of young horses now, a lot of which still haven't started yet,” Baltas said. “And I got horses from Europe. So we'll see what happens.”