Nevada Beach scoring the Goodwood at Santa Anita and getting a golden ticket. (Benoit Photo)
Breeders’ Cup Closer Look
No trainer in the history of the Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic has started more horses than Hall of Famer Bob Baffert. For those scoring at home, that number is 30.
And, not surprisingly, no one has won the Super Bowl of horse racing more times than the 72-year-old mainstay of the California circuit. His trophy case is filled with four Classic Cups.
He is on target to get starter No. 31 Saturday when Nevada Beach comes out of Baffert’s barn to compete in this much-anticipated Classic.
This time, though, all eyes on the sport will not be trained on Baffert, who has made a habit of running horses with big Classic intentions in the past.
“Do I have the best horse? Not on paper,” Baffert said with a laugh. “This is a very competitive field. Good horses.”
The most dangerous horse in the field of 10, in Baffert’s opinion, is Fierceness, from fellow Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher. Baffert liked the way he won the Pacific Classic at the end of August and the effort he put in finishing second in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic.
He also rattles off the names of Forever Young, who returns after a third-place finish in last year’s Classic as well as Sierra Leone, the defending champ. And he isn’t forgetting Sovereignty, the probable favorite.
A loaded field for sure. The wild card might just be Baffert, who knows how to win this race.
His four winners were all 3-year-olds: Bayern in 2014, Triple Crown winner American Pharoah in 2015, the freakishly talented Arrogate in 2016 and Authentic, the Horse of the Year in 2020.
Nevada Beach, a son of Omaha Beach owned by Mike Pegram, Karl Watson and Paul Weitman, is not as accomplished as Baffert’s bushel full of Classic winners. He has three wins in four career starts, by far the fewest trips to the races of any of the other Classic runners this year.
But Baffert doesn’t show up unless he thinks he has a chance.
“I have had success, but I have had favorites that got beat,” Baffert said of Classics gone by.
Most notably, perhaps, was Arrogate, who returned in 2017 as the horse to beat and ended up fifth as the 2-1 favorite. In that race, which was run at Del Mar, Baffert watched two of his other horses – Collected (5-1) and West Coast (4-1) – finish second and third.
“The Classic, it’s all about timing,” Baffert said. “I have had good horses that, by the time they got to there, they were just tired. The horses I won with? They were the best horses.”
Earlier this year, he was thinking of sending Nevada Beach to New York to run him in the prestigious G1 Travers Stakes at Saratoga Race Course. He didn’t do it because he remembered Uncle Chuck, who he trained for the same ownership group of Nevada Beach.
Uncle Chuck had shown talent in winning his first two starts and Baffert threw him into the deep end of the pool. Uncle Chuck nearly drowned, finishing sixth in the seven-horse field. He never raced again.
Nevada Beach won two of his first three – including the Los Alamitos Derby by four lengths (Uncle Chuck won that race by 4 1/2) – but Baffert didn’t think he was ready for the bright lights just yet.
“I made a mistake when I ran Uncle Chuck in the Travers,” Baffert said. “He was not ready for it physically and it cost him. I didn’t want to do that again, especially having to run against Sovereignty (who won the Travers this year by 10 lengths).”
Nevada Beach made his first start since the June 28 Los Alamitos Derby last month when he won the G1 Goodwood at Santa Anita in somewhat of a surprise at odds of 8-1.
“If he had not won the Goodwood, he would not be in the Classic,” Baffert said, referring to the Goodwood being part of the Breeders’ Cup “Win and You’re In” program. “Right now, he is doing well. He has never run against horses like this. You just don’t know how a lot of horses will run on the (Del Mar) surface. It can be a speedy track, and it cannot be speedy. It’s a tricky track.”
