National Treasure earns Baffert 8th Preakness; Mage runs 3rd

Baltimore

After his two most difficult years as a Hall of Fame trainer, Bob Baffert experienced one of the most mercurially emotional days of his long career.

The high was a familiar one. Baffert trained a Preakness Stakes winner.

Leading at every call but never by more than 1 1/2 lengths, National Treasure (5-2) won by a head Saturday to join Silver Charm, Real Quiet, Point Given, War Emblem, Lookin At Lucky and Triple Crown winners American Pharoah and Justify. That makes eight wins for Baffert in the Pimlico classic, breaking his tie with 19th-century trainer Wyndham Walden.

“I’m not thinking about the eight, because hopefully, I want to come back here and add to that,” the 70-year-old trainer said. “But I’m happy for just this horse doing what he did today. This horse brought us all out of a horrible moment today, and I’m just grateful for that horse.”

That horrible moment happened 5 1/2 hours earlier, when 3-year-old colt Havnameltdown broke down with a left-front fetlock injury in the Chick Lang Stakes (G3). That led to his being euthanized.

“I’ve been doing this for 43 years, and I’ve been hit with 1,000 things that can go wrong,” Baffert said. “You just get hit as a trainer. When you’ve done it as long as I have, you know you can’t get too excited, because just right around the corner, you’re going to get a punch in the gut. And it was a gut punch.”

It was the low point of a weekend that signaled the end of Baffert’s absence since 2021 from Triple Crown races. His exile was brought by a two-year suspension from Churchill Downs as well as last year’s 90-day penalty from the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission that was recognized nationwide. That was Baffert’s penance for the drug test Medina Spirit failed after winning the 2021 Kentucky Derby, a victory that was taken away nine months later and remains the subject of legal and bureaucratic fights.

“We’ve just always had his back,” said Sol Kumin, one of National Treasure’s owners and one of Baffert’s most loyal clients. “He’s been doing this a long time, and he’s been treated really unfairly. There’s never been any wavering from anybody in this group, especially led by Tom (Ryan of SF Racing). He’s our guy and will continue to be so.”

The sunny, 76-degree day that preceded a post-Preakness rainstorm was symbolic of the ups and downs Saturday for the Baffert barn. In the moment, though, it was cause for celebration for John Velázquez. Also in the Hall of Fame, the 51-year-old jockey won his sixth Triple Crown race and, finally, his first in 13 tries at the Preakness.

“What a moment,” Velázquez said. “All I can say, when you ride your best, and you try to ride your best, and the horse responds to everything you want to do, that’s all it takes. The horses give you everything they can, and that’s what you hope for. And he did.”

One of history’s best front-running jockeys, Velázquez put on a clinic in how to go only as fast as need be on the lead in order to save fuel for a big finish. In other words, slow the pace.

Hounded first by Coffeewithchris (10-1), who faded to finish last, and then by Blazing Sevens (9-2), who held on to place second, National Treasure put them away with fractions of 23.95, 48.93, 1:13.49 and 1:37.07 on the way to a final time of 1:55.12 for the 1 3/16 miles over the fast, main track. It was the slowest running of the Preakness since Justify won in the fog in 2018.

Asked if he was surprised about the dawdling pace, Blazing Sevens’s trainer Chad Brown said, “Yeah. It was just slow. I know it was void of speed, the race. I thought they’d have a little bit more pressure.”

Blazing Sevens actually flashed into the lead in mid-stretch, bumping a time or two with National Treasure to his inside. But the challenge finally was repelled by the Quality Road colt whose only previous victory was in his September debut at Del Mar.

Kentucky Derby winner Mage (7-5) stalked the early pace as planned, but the slow fractions conspired against him, and he finished third, 2 1/4 lengths behind.

“Those two horses with the pace, with no speed in the race, it was hard to catch up with them,” Mage’s jockey Javier Castellano said. “I had a beautiful, dream trip stalking behind those two horses. ... My horse responded. He responded very well, but he couldn’t catch up with those two horses. They opened up, and the race, it was over.”

Red Route One (8-1), typically a closer, could not make up any ground. With Joel Rosario riding, he took fourth, 4 3/4 lengths adrift of National Treasure.

“Joel did all he could to keep him as close as he could,” Red Route One’s trainer Steve Asmussen said. “He just stayed steady.”

Chase the Chaos (10-1), Perform (8-1) and Coffeewithchris finished fifth through seventh in that order. First Mission was scratched Friday after veterinarians discovered a minor ankle injury.

National Treasure became the 15th different horse to win a Triple Crown race since Justify completed the last sweep of the classics for Baffert in 2018. The way Baffert was talking in the post-race news conference, his colt seemed all but ticketed for the Belmont Stakes in three weeks to try to change that trend.

“We’ll see how hard of a toll it takes,” said Baffert, who has won a record 17 Triple Crown races. “We’ve got a couple days to think about it, because the plane leaves on Tuesday. If we were going to go to Belmont, we’d probably have to ship straight up there. I wouldn’t want to take him back to California. It’d be too hard on him. We’ve got the next 24 hours to let the horse tell us how he came out of it.”

Not thinking about that just yet, Velázquez was basking with his family in the latest accomplishment in his own career, one that has been stoked in recent years by his successful partnership with Baffert, complete with good-natured ribbing.

“Tell them what you said to me early,” Velázquez told Baffert. “He said, ‘Your window is closing, so you’d better win this one.’ ”

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