New excerpt: A 'great move' led to Justify's Triple Crown
This excerpt of "Justify: 111 Days to Triple Crown Glory," by Lenny Shulman, is presented with permission from Triumph Books. For more information or to order a copy, please visit triumphbooks.com/justify. HRN readers can save 30% by entering the promo code "JUSTIFY30" when purchasing.
Because the Southern California circuit had for years suffered from a horse shortage, being isolated from most of the country’s horsemen, Baffert needed to get creative to make sure Justify got another race under his belt at Santa Anita in the correct time frame, about a month after his maiden victory. While horsemen anywhere in the East could ship to a racetrack in Maryland or Pennsylvania or New York or New Jersey, for instance, to run, trainers in California who do not want to put their young charges on a jet have very few choices but to try and run where they are stabled.
Baffert didn’t want an inexperienced horse like Justify to have to travel, and he also didn’t want to step Justify up into stakes competition for his second race. The logical step would be an allowance race for 3-year-olds, in which the horses entered were not for sale as they would be in a claiming contest, and the competition isn’t as tough as it theoretically would be in a stakes race. The problem with allowance races, however, particularly in Southern California, is that they are the hardest races to fill with a sufficient number of horses, and therefore subject to being replaced in the condition book if not enough horses are entered. And Baffert knew full well that if word got out that Justify was pointing toward a particular allowance race, no other trainers would want to run against him, and the race likely wouldn’t go.
When Santa Anita’s condition book came out for mid-March, Baffert noticed a one-mile allowance/optional claiming race on March 11. The optional claiming designation means that an owner could offer his horse for sale in the race but didn’t have to do so. Neither Baffert nor Walden wanted to push Justify into the San Felipe Stakes, a grade 2 race for 3-year-olds to be run on March 10, and so they set their sights on the March 11 allowance event.
“I really needed for that allowance race to go,” Baffert said. And so he entered a different horse from his barn in the race, trying his best to hide his real intentions and to not scare off the competition. In addition to that first horse, Baffert had another horse, owned by a client from the Midwest named Frank Fletcher, who he also entered for the race. Fletcher wants more than anything to win the grade 1 Arkansas Derby at his home track of Oaklawn Park, and each year he sends Baffert a horse with the hope of him being good enough to compete in that race. Baffert let Fletcher know about the one-mile allowance race at Santa Anita, and Fletcher agreed to run his horse there. So Baffert knew that at least two horses would be signed up to help make the race go.
He told Walden to tell anyone who asked about Justify that the plan was to ship him to Sunland Park in New Mexico for his next race. He absolutely didn’t want to go to that Plan B, but it was an option if the allowance race didn’t fill. The assumption around Santa Anita was that Baffert would ship Justify to New Mexico for the Sunland Derby, a grade 3 race that awarded points toward entry in the Kentucky Derby. And that’s what Baffert wanted the other trainers at Santa Anita to assume.
Just before the official draw for the allowance race, there were six horses signed up for it, enough to make it go. Jockey Mike Smith’s agent, Brad Pegram, acting as a surrogate for Baffert, walked into the racing office at the last moment and told Hammerle, “I’m putting the horse in.” When Hammerle asked which horse, Pegram said, “Justify.”
“I played it cool,” said Hammerle. “We drew that race first so that word didn’t get around, and there were six horses in there. I remember thinking, ‘Great move.’”
Back east, Frank Fletcher howled when he saw his horse entered against Justify, and he sent Baffert a text that read, “Thanks for all your help, but I don’t think my horse needs to be running against the best 3-year-old in the country. Could you put him on the next flight to Oaklawn?” Baffert tried to persuade him that this would be a good test to find out how good Fletcher’s horse actually was, but Fletcher told the trainer he didn’t need to find that out in this particular fashion. With that defection, five horses would end up going to the post in Justify’s second race.
Fletcher having called Justify “the best 3-year-old in the country” was a wild claim on its face, and just goes to show how word-of-mouth can spread not only across a racetrack, but across the country. Justify had done next to nothing in competition at this point, while other horses had accomplished far more. Bolt d’Oro, the best 2-year-old in California the previous year, was already a two-time grade 1 winner and was deprived of the championship for top 2-year-old in the country in 2017 only because he drew an impossibly wide post in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, ran out in the middle of the track for most of that race, and checked in third behind Good Magic, who would be crowned the champion off that victory.
Other horses were winning graded stakes across the country, and Baffert himself had a horse named McKinzie who was far more seasoned than Justify. McKinzie was undefeated in three starts, including a victory at 2 in the grade 1 Los Alamitos Futurity and a win to start his 3-year-old season in the grade 3 Sham Stakes. In addition, he was a sentimental favorite of Baffert’s because he was owned by Baffert’s close friend Mike Pegram and Pegram’s partners Paul Weitman and Karl Watson; and because Pegram named the horse after a close friend of his and Baffert’s, Brad McKinzie, who had died the year before from cancer.
Still, Baffert was behaving behind the scenes like he truly believed he had a superstar hidden in his barn.
McKinzie was scheduled to run in the grade 2 San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita on March 10, one day before Justify’s allowance race. He was clearly a major prospect for the Triple Crown races, Baffert’s most accomplished 3-year-old at the time. So when a reporter wrapped up an hour-long interview with Baffert for a magazine story and Baffert said nonchalantly, “You wanna come see the Derby winner?” the assumption would have been that he was talking about showing him McKinzie. There was something in Baffert’s voice, though, that hinted at a twist in the conventional storyline. Baffert led the reporter out of his office to the barn next door and to a stall a couple in from the barn entrance. Before them stood the massive chestnut specimen of a Thoroughbred named Justify.
The two men admired the colt, playing around with his muzzle until Justify tried to get a little rough and assert his massive frame. Baffert struggled to push him back toward the middle of his stall. Justify was playful to a point, but he exerted his power and let you know he wasn’t to be trifled with. His majesty, his imposing presence, made him fit to be cast in bronze. That moment in early March stuck with the reporter, who wrote of the incident, and especially the “You wanna see the Derby winner?” line, in a subsequent column, drawing initially the ire of the trainer, who must balance taking care of all his owners equally.
“You’re gonna get me in trouble saying that,” Baffert texted. “I was just kidding about the Derby thing.”
After the reporter texted back his defense that he didn’t think Baffert had been kidding, the trainer shot back a text moments later that read, “I wasn’t. LOL.”
Walden may have sent Justify to California in part because of the consistently nice weather, but he would have been disappointed with Mother Nature on this early March weekend. On Saturday, March 10, it began raining in Los Angeles in mid-morning and by afternoon it was coming down long and heavy. In the San Felipe Stakes, McKinzie and Bolt d’Oro, the two heavy favorites in the race, hooked up and engaged in a stretch-long duel with one another that included multiple times when the two came together and bumped heading for the wire. McKinzie finished a nose in front of Bolt d’Oro, but after a stewards’ inquiry in which three judges examine replays of the race, it was ruled that McKinzie had interfered with Bolt d’Oro and McKinzie was disqualified to second place, ending his undefeated record.
The rains were such that the following day the Santa Anita racing surface was still officially listed as muddy when Justify walked onto the track for the fifth race. That the track condition would serve as a valuable piece of experience for what was to come later in the spring for Justify was on nobody’s radar on this cloudy California afternoon. With an eye on the big races down the road, Baffert made the decision to replace the young jockey Drayden Van Dyke with the respected veteran rider and Hall of Famer Mike Smith, who had handled Arrogate flawlessly during his run of great races.
Baffert had taken the blinkers off Justify for this race, and although Justify was bet down to heavy favoritism—a $2 wager would return a profit of 10 cents on him—there were valuable lessons Baffert wanted Smith to try and teach the colt. Still concerned that Justify was too speedy for his own good, Baffert wanted Smith to try and park the colt behind another runner early (“rating” him, in racetrack parlance) so that he could learn to relax and conserve his energy before being asked to run later in the race. Also, this one-mile race would be contested around two turns, unlike the one-turn maiden race Justify had won. Having a horse negotiate the two turns of longer races is critical in their achieving success at the classic distances, and racetrack wisdom runs to “you never know until they actually do it.”
Justify began from the outside post among the five runners, and when the gates sprung open in front of the Santa Anita grandstand, he started alertly. Smith expertly kept the colt relaxed and on the outside of his foes as they ran toward the first turn. Calexman, who had been entered in the San Felipe but scratched out of that race for the supposedly easier spot in this contest, made the early running and maintained a three-length lead into that turn, with Justify running outside of and alongside two other horses three-wide into the bend.
Down the backstretch Justify was running nice and relaxed and, without being asked, cut Calexman’s lead to one length as they approached the second turn. With three-eighths of a mile left to run, Smith asked Justify for another gear, and the response was instantaneous. Justify shot past Calexman like he was slingshot, and at the five-sixteenths pole he was already a length in front. As they passed the quarter pole, his advantage was three lengths. Hitting the top of the stretch, Justify switched his leads effortlessly (switching from leading with his left leg to leading with his right leg), and he was a picture of perfection through the lane as Smith sat dead still on him, no longer asking for anything.
Track announcer Wrona intoned, “He would have to race in outer space to feel less pressure…this colt of limitless potential wins by six lengths [officially 6.].” Then, with a nod toward the previous day’s San Felipe, Wrona added, “Just who is the most talented 3-year-old to race here this weekend?”
Smith, interviewed in the winner’s circle after the race, called Justify “Extremely impressive. He passed the two-turn test with flying colors. He has a great mind for a young horse and was able to settle and take a little dirt [being kicked back at him]. I was gearing him down at the end.”
Without being asked, Justify covered the mile in a tidy 1:35.73. However, Justify still hadn’t earned a single point toward qualifying for the Kentucky Derby. Those would have to come from finishing first or second in his next race, which would be a graded stakes contest somewhere. But with two dominating races in the bank, Baffert’s early call of Justify as the Derby winner was looking less outrageous by the day.