Kentucky Derby: Even with long shots, Baffert lures a crowd

Louisville, Ky.

The media gaggles around barn 33 at Churchill Downs are as reliable rain falling during Kentucky Derby week.

Sure enough, a thunderstorm overnight Monday made a noisy pass through the area. And yes, the scrums of cameras and microphones and recording devices have been out during drier mornings to surround Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert.

“There’s not a lot of us left,” Baffert said when he arrived Saturday morning from California. “Bill Mott’s still here, though. You’ve got other trainers of our early generation. We’re like The Last of the Mohicans. Now a different group is coming out.”

Baffert not only has been asked about his Derby horses Potente and Litmus Test. There also is his Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks filly Explora. But there is no D. Wayne Lukas over at barn 44. The de facto mayor of the Churchill backside died last summer.

“I miss Wayne,” Baffert said. “I miss talking to him. Without him here, it’s a different little vibe.”

Something else is different these days. Baffert, who shares the record with Ben Jones for most Kentucky Derby training wins with six, does not have the buzz horse the way he did with post-time favorites Lookin At Lucky, Bodemeister, American Pharoah and Justify in the ’10s. Potente is 20-1 and Litmus Test 30-1 on the morning line for Saturday’s race.

Potente was taken out of character in his most recent start. He was 2-for-2 going into the April 4 Santa Anita Derby (G1), but then he found himself in an early speed duel before So Happy caught him in mid-stretch. The $2.4 million Into Mischief colt owned by Peter Fluor and K.C. Weiner’s Speedway Stables wound up in second.

“He doesn’t want to be on the lead,” Baffert said. “He’s more of a stalker type who comes running. He was forced to be on the lead because he broke so well in the Santa Anita Derby. It took him out of his game completely, but I think he got a hard race. It’s good to get a good, hard race into your horse to toughen him up. All the horses that have had hard races at Santa Anita have come back and won this race.”

Juan Hernández, a Baffert regular who has won 21 riding titles since he moved from Northern to Southern California in 2020, gets his first Derby assignment riding Potente from post 14 on Saturday.

“He’s a big, strong, beautiful horse,” Baffert said Monday morning. “He looks like he can get the distance, and he has speed to go along with it. That’s important. He’s a good gate horse.”

Potente showed his speed Sunday in his final pre-Derby workout. He blazed five furlongs in 57.8 seconds, the fastest of 23 workers who covered the same distance that morning on Churchill’s main track.

“I didn’t think he was going that fast,” Baffert told FanDuel TV. “I looked down, and I go, oooo, he’s going a little fast. But (Martín García) had a hold of him the whole way. I worked him with some company, but all of a sudden, I looked at my watch, and he was just cruising. I was looking for at least 59 and change or whatever. But he’s a horse that just bounced over this racetrack. ... He came back and looked like it was nothing for him. He did it pretty effortlessly, so I’d say I was pretty impressed with that work.”

Litmus Test, who needed seven defections to get into the 20-horse field Saturday, had everything go wrong for him March 28 when he finished seventh of eight in the Arkansas Derby (G1) at Oaklawn. Racing for the first time without blinkers, he slipped trying to get out of the gate. He was hung out four wide in the clubhouse turn. By the time Francisco Arrieta asked for more in the turn for home, the Nyquist colt had nothing left.

“I’ve never brought a horse in here coming off of a subpar race,” Baffert said. “We tried to change things up. We took the blinkers off and tried to take him back (in the pack), and he just didn’t run that day. I’m going to draw a line through that.”

Four weeks earlier on the same track, Litmus Test was the 3-2 favorite when Flavien Prat rode him to an early lead only to finish third in the Rebel (G2).

“He just went backwards a little bit on me at Oaklawn,” Baffert said. “He was on the lead, and I shipped him. It’s a hard, tough ship.”

A debut winner who also scored in the Los Alamitos Futurity (G2) to finish a busy 2-year-old season, the $875,000 colt owned by the big SF Racing partnership will have blinkers put back on for the Derby. He also gets García, his sixth different rider in eight starts.

“He’s a bit of a long shot,” Baffert said. “He should be.”’

Litmus Test breezed from the gate Thursday and went five furlongs in 59.0 seconds under García.

Explora, a 6-1 co-third choice in the Kentucky Oaks program, appears to be Baffert’s best chance to win a feature race this week. Owned by Mike Pegram, Karl Watson and Paul Weitman, the $350,000 Blame filly is a three-time stakes winner who has been off since she won March 1 in the Honeybee (G3) at Oaklawn.

“She had a little setback,” said Baffert, who has won the Oaks three times. “I was going to run her at Oaklawn (in the Grade 2 Fantasy on March 27). She got sick, but she came back. She worked really well (Monday).”

Explora was clocked at 58.8 seconds breezing five furlongs, also with García riding. She may have to go that fast coming out of post 1 on Friday night in the 1 1/8-mile Oaks.

“The 1 hole. We’re going to have to use her hard leaving there,” said Baffert, who called on Flavien Prat to ride Explora again after he got the Honeybee win. “That makes it a little bit tougher, but I can’t worry about it.

“I don’t know why the 1 hole just finds us,” Baffert said. “I should have made that bet that I’d get the 1 hole at least once with that new (prediction market).”