It is fair to say that training horses in another country might mean that you end up escaping the attention of British horse racing lovers, unless you happen to be one of the best trainers of all time. In the United States of America, that is exactly the category that Bob Baffert fits into, meaning that even some UK fans of the sport are likely to have heard of him.
If the name sounds familiar, that might well be because you are aware of the fact that he won the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Trainer four times. That being said, his is a career that is not without controversy, so you might know him for that reason too.
About
Robert A. Baffert was born on the 13th of January 1953 in the city of Nogales in the US state of Arizona. He grew up on a ranch, helping his family to raise chickens and cattle, then when he was a ten-year-old his father bought some quarter horses that he Baffert took to a dirt track to practice racing on. He worked as a jockey for $100 a day when he was a teenager, working on informal tracks before moving on to more recognised ones, winning his first race when he was a 17-year-old. Having graduated from the University of Arizona’s Race Track Industry Program, he began training horses.
Whilst his success as a jockey came in fits and starts, the same cannot be said about his life working as a trainer. By the time he was 20, his reputation was such that other trainers hired him in order to run their stables. It was in 1991 that he made the move to train thoroughbreds on a full-time basis, having worked at the Los Alamitos Race Course in California. His name became wider known a year later when he trained Thirty Slews to victory in the Breeders’ Cup, establishing a reputation as someone who could work with relatively less expensive horses but train them to win big.
Major Successes
When it comes to American racing, it is probably easier to list the races that Bob Baffert hasn’t trained the winner of. In 1996, he trained a horse named Cavonnier, who came second in the Kentucky Derby. That began a relationship between Baffert and the American Classic races that lasted for decades, winning both the Derby and the Preakness Stakes a year later with Silver Charm. Both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes were races that he won at least half a dozen times each, whilst other big races in both the US and further afield saw him enter the Winners’ Enclosure.
As well as winning all of the big American Classics, including a couple of Triple Crowns, he also trained the winner of a large number of Breeders’ Cup races, such as the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and the Breeders’ Cup Classic, all more than once. Add to that the number of winners that he’s trained in the likes of the Dubai World Cup and it’s easy to see why it is that he’s considered to be one of the best trainers in the world. That he was able to do all of this with many of the horses used being less expensive simply adds to the mystique of his work as a trainer.
Here is a list of just some of the races that he has won as a trainer at least once in his career, with many of them being more than once:
- Kentucky Derby
- Preakness Stakes
- Belmont Stakes
- Breeders’ Cup Sprint
- Breeders’ Cup Classic
- Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint
- Dubai World Cup
- Dubai Golden Shaheen
- Acorn Stakes
- Gold Cup at Santa Anita Stakes / Hollywood Gold Cup Handicap
Horses Trained
It is not unreasonable to suggest that when you win as many races as Baffert has, you have worked with some top-class horses along the way. He won the Preakness Stakes with Lookin’ At Lucky, for example, who also won numerous other major races, but is arguably not even in the top ten of horses that Baffert has trained. Then again, when you become the first trainer of the 21st century to train the American Classics Triple Crown winner not once but twice, it’s fair to suggest that you’ve been able to work with some incredible horses during your career that are more than deserving of a mention.
Here is a look at some of the best horses trained by Baffert:
American Pharoah
Even British horse racing fans with little more than a passing interest in the American iteration of the sport might well have heard of American Pharoah. The bay stallion was bred by Ahmed Zayat and entered the yard of Baffert, who came fifth in his track debut when racing as a two-year-old. It was in the Triple Crown races that the horse made his name, though, following up some minor wins with a 2015 for the ages. The horse won that year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic, but then went on to win the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes to be the first Triple Crown winner since 1978.
Justify
Three years after entering the Winners Enclosure of the three Triple Crown races with American Pharoah, Baffert got to do it all over again with Justify. If you want a sense of just how good a horse Justify was, the fact that he became the first horse since Apollo in 1882 to win the Kentucky Derby having not raced at all as a two-year-old might well prove it. In fact, he retired having never lost a race, picking up all of the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes in 2018, going on to be named the American Champion Three-Year-Old Male Horse that year too.
Point Given
There is a long list of excellent horses trained by Baffert, but Point Given might well be the one that proves that you don’t need to win the Triple Crown to be considered a noteworthy horse. Bred in Kentucky and owned by Prince Ahmed bin Salman, the chestnut stallion won the Kentucky Juvenile Stakes in 2000 to prove his ability. A year later and he became the joint-fourth fastest runner ever in the Belmont Stakes, winning it by more than 12 lengths, going on to win the Preakness Stakes having also won the Travers Stakes, making him the first horse since 1967 to do so and being named the American Horse of the Year in the process.
