Breeders’ Cup: Baffert feels for Mott while preparing his string

The first thing to ask Los Angeles Dodgers fan Bob Baffert this week was whether he got through all 18 innings of game 3 in the World Series.

“I didn’t make it,” he said. “I lost it at 17, but I knew the Dodgers were going to pull it out.”

But enough of the chit-chat. The big elephant in the room was two stable rows away from Baffert’s barn at Del Mar. Actually, it was the horse who turned out to be too hot to trot or gallop or much else.

Fair odds are updated after scratch of Sovereignty.

Fellow Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott rippled the Breeders’ Cup calm with the news that horse-of-the-year frontrunner Sovereignty spiked a fever and had to be scratched from Saturday’s $7 million Classic. That thud was heard only three days after Sovereignty was flown from New York and two days after a workout at Del Mar.

Baffert has had the misfortune of having been there and done that.

“I know what it’s like, and I feel for Bill,” said Baffert, who runs long shot Nevada Beach in the Classic. “All the years that I’ve run horses, when I shipped for the Derby, the Triple Crowns, you’re always worried about that. I’ve been so lucky, and it finally hit me with Muth when I took him to Pimlico.”

That scratch from Preakness 2024 underscored a concern Baffert has had since Tex Sutton Equine Air Transportation lost its access to a cargo plane it had used to ship Thoroughbreds. Now it relies on FedEx charter aircraft, which are not permanently fitted for horses the way the old plane was.

“It’s tougher to ship horses now without Tex Sutton,” Baffert said. “It’s just more stressful on the horses because you have to ship them four or five hours, and they get on a plane. It’s tough. You just never know when it’s going to hit you. Everything’s timing.”

For the second year in a row, Baffert has the home-course advantage with the Breeders’ Cup being at Del Mar. Instead of a plane, all he had to do was load his horses onto trailers for the 111-mile drive from Santa Anita. Since he does it every summer and fall, it is as routine as a drive can be in Southern California.

Nevada Beach has done it before, but until now he has trained but not raced at Del Mar. He got his invitation to the Breeders’ Cup Classic thanks to his Sept. 27 win at 8-1 odds in the Goodwood (G1). The 3-year-old Omaha Beach colt owned by Mike Pegram, Karl Watson and Paul Weitman might be under the radar at 20-1 on the revised morning line with just the one graded-stakes start on his 4: 3-1-0 ledger.

“We always knew that he was a nice horse,” Baffert said in a phone interview with Horse Racing Nation this week. “I was going to take him to the Travers (G1). Then I changed my mind, and then I was going to take him to the Pennsylvania Derby (G1). I changed my mind when I knew that Nysos wasn’t going to be able to make the Goodwood. I said, well, I’ll just keep him here and send Goal Oriented there. No use sending the both of them.”

After the Goodwood victory, Baffert was not even out of the winner’s circle when he committed Nevada Beach to the Breeders’ Cup Classic. That is something he is not prone to do five weeks before a target race.

“When he ran that well and ran a big race, it’s one of those things where if it wasn’t a win-and-you’re-in, would he be in the Classic? I don’t know,” Baffert said. “He’s a horse that’s improving. I just think he deserves a shot. He fits in there. There’s some good horses in there.”

Nysos, Goal Oriented and 2024 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Citizen Bull give Baffert a three-pronged attack Saturday in the Dirt Mile. Even though he missed the Pacific Classic (G1) and Pennsylvania Derby this summer because of a minor bruise to a hind foot, Nysos is the 8-5 program favorite.

Baffert is confident the lightly raced, 4-year-old Nyquist colt owned by Baoma Corp will be a good fit for the two-turn route. That is despite the fact Nysos has not raced since his July 26 win in the 1 1/16-mile San Diego Handicap (G2).

Nysos’s 6: 5-1-0 record was cleaved by a 15-month break from the winter of 2024 to the spring of 2025. If it was not one setback, it was another. Nysos comes into the Dirt Mile off three straight weekly track works, including a six-furlong, 1:11.0 bullet Saturday at Santa Anita.

The Dirt Mile was not the original plan.

“If he would have made the Goodwood, he would have been in the Classic,” Baffert said. “But I needed just another week or so. I was close, but I didn’t want to run him that far (1 1/4 miles), and I’d committed to the (Dirt) Mile by then.”

Also in the Dirt Mile, 3-year-old allowance winner Goal Oriented carries 6-1 morning-line odds off thirds in the Haskell (G1) and Pennsylvania Derby, and 3-year-old Citizen Bull is 10-1 after scoring Aug. 31 in the Shared Belief over the same course and distance as Saturday’s race.

“You know Citizen Bull likes Del Mar, and he’s fast,” Baffert said. “Goal has been right there at a mile with those good 3-year-olds, and he’s getting better.”

Three consecutive bullet workouts in as many weeks had Baffert wondering out loud whether he could have had bigger ambitions for Goal Oriented if Breeders’ Cup pre-entry and entry deadlines had come later.

“With Goal we were thinking about the Classic also for him,” he said, adding with a chuckle that “it’s just one of those things where they really should let us enter three days before.”

Seismic Beauty, the Uncle Mo filly owned by MyRacehorse and Peter Leidel, is a 9-5 favorite for Baffert in the Distaff. In a division where one filly after another has lost her chance to plant her flag on the summit, 4-year-old Seismic Beauty has won three in a row, most recently the Aug. 2 Clement L. Hirsch (G1) at Del Mar going 1 1/16 miles, 110 yards less than the Distaff.

“We were always very high on her,” Baffert said. “She’s a big filly who covers a lot of ground. She’s good, she’s fast, she runs fast, she’s doing well, and she likes Del Mar.”

From the 2024 Triple Crown trail, 4-year-old Imagination has found a new wheelhouse in one-turn races. He rolls into the six-furlong Sprint at 6-1 off a win going the same distance against Breeders’ Cup rivals Dr. Venkman and repeat-minded Straight No Chaser in last month’s Santa Anita Sprint Championship (G2).

“That was a good race,” said Baffert, who hoped the Into Mischief colt owned by the big SF Racing partnership had a better position than post 7 in the field of 14. “I was hoping to draw a little bit further out. Two good horses (Bentornato in 10 and Straight No Chaser in 12) drew a little bit further out, but he’s doing really well. He’s sort of a tricky horse to ride, but Juan Hernández knows him well.”

Baffert also has 4-1 Hope Road, 5-1 Richi and 8-1 Splendora in the Filly & Mare Sprint on Saturday.

On the Friday card featuring 2-year-olds, Baffert sends 2-for-2 Brant at 5-2 and Litmus Test at 15-1 into the Juvenile, a race in which he said “Ted Noffey (4-5) looks pretty good.”

In the Juvenile Fillies, Baffert goes with 5-2 Explora, first in the Oak Leaf (G2). And then there is the other Baffert in that race. At 9-2, Del Mar Debutante (G1) winner Bottle of Rouge is owned by another Baffert, Bob’s wife Jill.

“I know that two turns is not going to be a problem for her,” Baffert said, deflecting a joke about household pressure to win. “(Explora) passed the two-turn test last time, and she might be a little quicker. But Bottle of Rouge, I think she’ll get better with age and distance.”

With 19 wins, Baffert is tied with Chad Brown for third on the list of Breeders’ Cup training victories. Aidan O’Brien and the late D. Wayne Lukas have 20 each, and O’Brien has an army of turf horses who could add to his total.

“Mine are all dirt races,” Baffert said, counting 2008 wins on the old Santa Anita synthetic with Midshipman in the Juvenile and Midnight Lute in the Sprint. “I think if you’re in the business long enough, you can get there. I just like the fact that I’m able to compete. It’s exciting to know that you’ve got some horses that can compete. That’s what makes it exciting, if you get lucky, and you win.”