Kentucky Derby 2022: Baffert is not only trainer who is absent

Louisville, Ky. 

The shadow of a suspended trainer has been cast over the 2022 Kentucky Derby, but it has not attracted all that much attention.

No, not the Bob Baffert shadow. There is another trainer who is absent but who has a horse in Saturday’s race.

Satish Seemar, a six-time training champion in Dubai, had his license frozen worldwide because he was looking after a horse named North America. That 10-year-old gelding is owned by Ramzan Kadyrov, a human-rights pariah who is head of the Chechen Republic and persona non grata in the eyes of the U.S. State Department.

Control of Seemar’s stable passed last fall to his nephew and longtime assistant Bhupat Seemar, who promptly maintained the family legacy by winning this winter’s training title at Meydan.

One of the Seemars’ horses, stakes-winning sprinter Summer Is Tomorrow, finished second March 26 in the 1 3/16-mile UAE Derby (G2) to earn himself a spot Saturday in the Kentucky Derby.

Forget for the moment whether Satish Seemar belongs in Louisville. What about the horse?

“He’s won a seven-furlong race by 8 1/2 lengths,” Bhupat Seemar told Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod this week outside the Churchill Downs quarantine barns. “He absolutely smashed the field. The reason he hasn’t won any further is because we never ran him any further.”

So now Seemar, 45, who was schooled in India and spent four years as an assistant to Baffert, finds himself with the horse who may lead the field into the clubhouse turn. Whether Summer Is Tomorrow can stay there into the second turn is a whole nuther question. He withered late in the UAE Derby, but Seemar did not think that was a case of a short-distance horse going too far.

“Maybe it was lack of conditioning, to be honest,” Seemar said. “It was his first two-turn race. I think that last half a furlong he was just plodding through water. If he would have probably been given the conditioning, and if we had run him in a mile race before, I think he would have been very close in the UAE Derby.

Instead, the Summer Front colt finished 2 3/4 lengths behind Japan-based Crown Pride. That made bettors bearish on Summer Is Tomorrow, a 30-1 long shot on the Kentucky Derby morning line who was 110-1 on Friday morning at Circa Sports in Las Vegas.

Bred in Kentucky by Brereton Jones, Summer Is Tomorrow has been through the sales ring three times already and sold twice. He went for $169,743 last spring at the Arqana Deauville 2-year-old breeze-up in France to Ireland-based owners Michael Hilary and Negar Burke.

“The owners have been so supporting (the Derby bid) financially,” Seemar said. “This is a massive, massive, massive cost to them. To send a crew here, the horse here, all the logistics of it were humongous.”

Seemar knew Summer Is Tomorrow was breaking the mold in becoming the first Middle East-based horse to be shipped into U.S. quarantine to then race in the Kentucky Derby. He was confident this would set a successful precedent.

“This is not going to be the last horse,” he said. “I think we’re going to come back. Now we know what to do.”

Admitting that Summer Is Tomorrow was bred to race on turf, Seemar said an early workout told him and his uncle that dirt sprints would be the way to go.

“His first breeze was so good,” Seemar said. “As a physical specimen he is a very good-looking horse. When we saw him breeze in the U.K., we thought he was a properly nice horse, and he would develop into that frame.”

Seemar admitted in hindsight that Summer Is Tomorrow might have been suited for the UAE 2,000 Guineas, a dirt mile in February.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t run him,” he said, “because the jockeys would tell me he was very fast, and he won’t have the stamina. I wish I would have listened to my own gut instinct. On the other hand, we all get it wrong or right sometimes. Then we did run him in the UAE Derby, and he ran a very good race.”

Summer Is Tomorrow – and, for that matter, Crown Pride – will be out to change an 0-for-25 Derby record for horses who had their last prep outside North America. No UAE Derby graduate has finished better than fifth in 16 runs for the roses.

The colt’s jockey Saturday will be the same one he had at Meydan. Mickaël Barzalona has raced only twice at Churchill Downs, finishing off the board in turf races during the 2018 Breeders’ Cup.

The 0-fer statistics did not discourage Seemar, nor did he seem too worried about Barzalona and Summer Is Tomorrow setting too quick a pace.

“He’ll probably go to the lead, and I’m not going to complicate it too much,” Seemar said. “You’ve got to do what’s right for your horse. Of course if there’s breakneck speed in front, that’s the jockey’s job (to manage). Mickaël Barzalona is one of the top jockeys in the world. We mulled over (local options), but sometimes it’s better to know the person, and Mickaël has ridden the horse.”

Hopes that owners Hilary and Burke would make the trip to Kentucky were complicated by the fact Burke holds citizenship in Iran, making it more difficult for him to get a visa to visit the United States. That seemed like small potatoes compared with the absence of Satish Seemar, with whom Bhupat said he speaks almost every day.

“He’s a great motivator in my life,” he said. “He’s been a great mentor in my life. He’s given me the freedom to make my own decisions, which is very hard when you work for someone.”

Asked if his uncle should have been allowed to run the stable and come to Kentucky, Seemar said, “That’s not a question for me to answer. It cannot be a distraction. I’ve worked for him for 20 years. Obviously, it’s great to have him by your side.”