Baffert Nears $300M Mark With an All-Star Stable

To say that Bob Baffert has a strong stable has been a recurring theme for more than two decades.

Yet in 2020, as the 67-year-old trainer stands poised to achieve yet another important milestone in his illustrious career, he has assembled a shed row of epic proportions that resembles a dugout at Major League Baseball's All-Star Game.

Since it's spring, much attention has been rightfully focused on his band of 3-year-olds, which already includes three grade 1 winners and could add a fourth if the undefeated Authentic continues his winning ways in the June 6 Santa Anita Derby (G1).

"I think Bob is going to win all of the classics," said Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas about a disjointed 2020 Triple Crown chase that could begin in the latter part of June with the Belmont Stakes (G1).

As impressive as that sounds, even in a year decimated by the suspension of racing throughout the country by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 3-year-olds are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the depth and quality in Baffert's Santa Anita Park barn.

As Baffert stands a little less than $250,000 shy of becoming the sport's third trainer to reach $300 million in North American earnings, there are also six older male grade 1 winners in his barn, including four in Maximum Security, Mucho Gusto, McKinzie and Game Winner, who can be viewed among the very best contenders for the year-end $7 million Longines Breeders' Cup Classic (G1) at Keeneland.

It gives Baffert the kind of strength in the sport's marquee divisions that is rarely seen and underscores why he has been a Hall of Fame conditioner for the past 11 years and owns more Triple Crown wins than any other trainer with 15.

"All of those grade 1 winners he has now are a tribute to Bob's training ability. He's clearly the number one trainer in the world. Period," Lukas said. "He has those horses and he'll manage them right and get the most out of them. He's at a place where everybody else in this business would like to be."

Sprinkle in an impressive collection of well-bred, late-developing 3-year-old fillies and colts who can be counted on to be heard from as the year progresses as well as the impending arrival of another crop of blueblood 2-year-olds and it's a staggering amount of talent for one barn.

"You take his second-string horses and you'd have a line of trainers going around the block to train them," said owner Mike Pegram, who has been sending Baffert horses for about 30 years and has become close friends with him. "In 1999, I had Real Quiet, Silverbulletday, and Captain Steve with him and his barn was loaded, but he never had the quality like this. He's got young horses, older horses. Everything."

Even for the veteran members of Baffert's team, who have been there through the bulk of 15 Triple Crown victories, 15 Breeders' Cup wins and two Triple Crown sweeps, it's impossible to ignore the stable's current galaxy of stars.

"When I see all the horses in this barn, that's why I enjoy coming to work every day," said Jim Barnes, who has been Baffert's assistant trainer for 21 years. "We have depth and it's always great to have depth."

Affable and sharp-witted as opposed to braggadocios, Baffert is not one to play up the hands he's been dealt. Even with earnings of $299,750,737 through May 17, the prospect of joining Todd Pletcher and Steve Asmussen as the third member of the $300 million club merits only a quip.

"If I could have done that in a year, that would have better," Baffert said. "Then I could have retired."

Retirement is about the last thing on Baffert's mind these days thanks to his dream team of runners.

"I never think about the numbers," he said. "It's all about quality racing for us. We zero in on quality runners and big races, not numbers."

Of course, there are moments when even Baffert is taken back by the star power in his barn, which increased in March when Saudi Cup winner and 3-year-old champion Maximum Security was moved to his barn by co-owners Gary and Mary West (who already had Game Winner with Baffert) and the Coolmore team after original trainer Jason Servis was indicted on race doping charges.

One of those instances came recently when Aidan Butler, the acting executive director of California operations for The Stronach Group, visited Baffert's barn during the suspension of racing at Santa Anita that was lifted May 15.

"I really don't think about it unless someone's with me when I walk down the barn," Baffert said about his star-studded array of runners. "The other day I was with Aidan Butler. We're walking through and I'm pointing out some horses and he said he wants to see Maximum Security. I take him there and he says, 'Wow.' Then looks over and he says, 'Is that McKinzie?' I say, 'Yep.' He says, 'Is that Nadal?' Then he sees Charlatan and the rest of them. I told him, 'Dude, that's why we have to get racing going again.' 

"I don't realize who the horses are because they're all like my kids. It's probably like (University of Alabama football coach) Nick Saban seeing all his players."

Given all of the Triple Crown wins and the sweeps by American Pharoah  in 2015 and Justify  in 2018, Baffert's dominance in the 3-year-old division with the undefeated trio of Authentic and Arkansas Derby winners Nadal and Charlatan, is hardly a shock to the system.

What's different about 2020 is the bevy of older stars. In 2018 and 2019, Baffert accumulated 21 grade 1 wins in North America, though his lone winner of a grade 1 stakes for older males was McKinzie, who captured the 2019 Whitney Stakes (G1). 

He's already matched his total of the last two years with a January victory by the 4-year-old Mucho Gusto in the Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes Presented by Runhappy (G1). And now, with the aforementioned foursome topped by Maximum Security, who Baffert says is "a ways from racing," plus grade 1 winners Improbable, a candidate for the June 6 Hollywood Gold Cup at Santa Anita (G1), and Roadster, the Hall of Fame trainer has a six-pack of options for the year's premier races for older males.

"It's nice to have so many good older horses. A lot of the good ones in the past were retired at 3," said Baffert, whose horses have earned $317,090,737 in all countries though three Dubai World Cup (G1) wins. "We just get them ready. I don't think too much about what I have. We just train them like athletes and get them ready."

Suffice it to say, it's not that simple of a process and one of the elements that makes the trainer of 3,021 North American winners so good at his chosen profession is an ability to pick out the right spots for his horses.

"Go back in history and he's always been great at knowing where a horse belongs," said Pegram, who owns the 5-year-old McKinzie along with Karl Watson and Paul Weitman. "He knows where they fit. He knows how to read the Daily Racing Form. When he puts a horse on a plane, you need to follow that horse. He doesn't ship to run second. He's locked and loaded."

Another of Baffert's skills has been courting the right owners.

"Bob does a great job of putting the stable together every year for us," Barnes said. "We appreciate that and know it's not easy."

Yet the skill required in winning 208 grade or group 1 stakes since he moved from his quarter-horse roots to Thoroughbreds in 1990 involves much more than finding owners with lots of digits in their checking account.

"Bob has not only assembled a great equine program, he's developed a great clientele base to go along with it. But you don't get that clientele base without earning it. People migrate to people who win," Lukas said. "A lot of people have had the wheel base financially to acquire a lot of good horses, but Bob has an excellent eye for a racehorse. A lot of money has been spent on horses who you wonder where they are, but Bob, with limited funds, bought athletic horses who could potentially be good and he made them good. He's an excellent, excellent horseman."

Lost in the shuffle of all of his recent success is that some of Baffert's initial success stories on the Triple Crown trail were written with inexpensive purchases. Real Quiet, who fell a nose shy in the 1997  Belmont Stakes (G1) of giving Pegram and Baffert a Triple Crown sweep, was a $17,000 yearling buy and Silver Charm, Baffert's first Kentucky Derby (G1) winner, was originally purchased for $16,500 and sold for $100,000 as a 2-year-old in 1996.

"People forget Bob won the Kentucky Derby in back-to-back years with colts by Silver Buck (Silver Charm) and Quiet American (Real Quiet)," Pegram said. "There's no better horse-buyer in the sport."

Lukas, who dominated sport in the 80s and 90s, believes there are a couple of key ingredients in Baffert's model for success.

"Bob has an extraordinary eye for a good horse," Lukas said. "If he tells me I need to look at Lot 64 (at a sale), I don't need to look at him. I know that one will be a damn good horse in my eyes. Then he knows what to do with them when he gets them. A lot of guys get great horses that I thought were super good yearlings and they never show up anywhere. He has done an amazing job of managing his horses. He has a great feel for where they belong and what he can do with them and play to their strengths."

A recent example of that is the success of the ownership group behind Charlatan, Authentic, and Baffert's other grade 1-winning 3-year-old, Eight Rings. SF Racing, Jack Wolf's Starling Racing and Sol Kumin's Head of Plains Partners were all involved in Justify's career and following that colt's Triple Crown success, they branched out, and, with Kumin using his Madaket Stables group, formed their own team to buy 20 yearlings in 2018 and another 15 in 2019 and then added additional partners along the way.

Aside from the three horses in the first group's graded stakes victories, Charlatan and Eight Rings have already secured stallion deals.

"You have to give credit to (SF Racing's) Tom Ryan," said Wolf, the founder and managing partner of Starlight Racing. "He thought up the idea and was adamant about two things. They would all be colts and Bob Baffert would train them."

Wolf and Kumin had raced primarily on the East Coast before they each bought a share of Justify's racing rights from SF, but have been delighted with the West Coast results Baffert and a team that includes Barnes and fellow longtime assistant Mike Marlow at Los Alamitos has generated for them.

"I'm relatively new to working with them and I'm totally impressed with Bob's horsemanship skills and how open he and communicative he is," Wolf said. "You can't doubt his results. He'll tell you he gets a lot of good stock, but you have to know what to do with the stock and he obviously knows what he's doing. It's him and his organization. He has great help, great riders. I watched a feature on Silver Charm recently, and the people I saw in it are the same people still working with him."

Baffert, who dubbed the group "The Avengers," believes the success is reflective of mixing a quality group of owners and their respective bloodstock agents.

"It was a great move," Baffert said. "There's five of us looking at the yearlings and that's five sets of eyes that have been successful in the business. As a result, there's less mistakes and we only got outbid on a few of the ones we wanted."

While Baffert is clearly the sport's most visible figure, he still remembers his roots as a rider and trainer of quarter-horses in Arizona. He maintains tremendous respect for the great trainers who came before him, and a large part of his 530 graded or group stakes wins and four Eclipse Awards as the sport's top trainer have been based on modeling his operation after them.

"When I first got in the game with quarter-horses, Wayne Lukas was the one setting the bar," Baffert said. "I was about 18 and at the track in Nogales where I started riding horses. He pulled in with a shiny trailer with all these well-bred horses. I'm watching in the paddock with my dad and I thought to myself that's what I want to do. I want to be that guy. But I never imagined doing what he did.

"Then when I came to California, Charlie Whittingham was the big guy I looked up to. I remember a few years ago at Ocala I was sitting next to Leroy Jolley and I told him, 'When I look at you, I remember Genuine Risk and Meadow Star.' He was what a trainer should be, rugged, tough. I told him when I see him, it's like, 'Wow. That's Leroy Jolley.' He's still an icon to me. People like Ron McAnally, Allen Jerkens and guys like that, when I would see them, I was shy to go up and talk to them."

Now, with as lengthy a list of accomplishments as any trainer has ever complied, and another one just $249,263 in earnings away, it's Baffert who has the industry's respect, even if he does not fully embrace his status as the sport's biggest rock star.

"I can't imagine someone younger looking up to me like I like did to them," Baffert said about the older Hall of Famers, "but I guess I'm not done yet."

No, he's not, and judging by the wealth of talent in his barn at the moment, there are still some scintillating chapters to write about his career and what he has meant to the sport.

"There's no doubt he's a great ambassador for the sport. He loves the game and is a wonderful person with no malice," Pegram said. "It all came natural to him and unless someone tells him, he won't even know about breaking a record. That's the kind of person he is. More and more people are realizing how good he is and I'm glad I was along for the ride. My success in the sport is because I hitched my wagon to the right star.

"What I can say about Bobby is that it's good to be the king."

Indeed it is.