American Pharoah Read online

  Still, she had time to track the development of the Littleprincessemma colt that she just knew was destined for something special. She had spoken with the Taylors when the colt was still in Kentucky and was pleased to know that they were as impressed with him as well. He was harder to follow while in Florida at the McKathans, but she had heard how he was the star of the Zayat Stables showcase. Now that American Pharoah had a name and a home in Bob Baffert’s barn, it was easy to track his progress online through the Jockey Club’s portfolio services, and she eagerly awaited the e-mail alerts that came after each of his workouts.

  Frances had to reconcile the stout times American Pharoah was turning in with the pint-sized athlete she had helped wean and watched grow into a graceful athlete. There were thirteen of them now, each better than the last. Her heart sank a little when she watched American Pharoah’s debut; he certainly did not look like the cool customer she had known as a youngster. She chalked it up to a learning experience. When she saw the colt in the Futurity, however, it was as if beholding yesterday’s kindergartener turn into today’s high school graduate. Frances had American Pharoah ending this race in the winner’s circle after the first quarter mile. Her heart filled with wonder as the colt seemed to shift through his gears as if he were on a Formula 1 racetrack.

  “So in command,” she said. “Just beautiful.”

  In Las Vegas, Johnny Avello walked out to the floor of his sportsbook to watch the horse he had been hearing so much about run in the Del Mar Futurity. Avello was the executive director of race and sports operations at Wynn Las Vegas, where point spreads and fast horses were spoken with the same intensity with which farmers discuss the weather. He is a Don in one of this town’s most respected fraternities, the brotherhood of bookies. He’s a wizard, a Wizard of Odds. He has predicted the winners of Super Bowls and World Series as well as Miss America Pageants and the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Earlier in the year, he correctly selected the winner of twenty-two of the twenty-four Oscar categories. He singled out seven Dancing with the Stars winners before they ever rhumbaed or anything else onstage.

  It was his passion for racehorses, however, that had given him those opportunities and had transformed a plush corner of one of the city’s finest casinos into his own comfortable speakeasy, one with a giant odds board winking in red and wall-to-wall televisions blinking sporting events. Avello grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York. He was a bookie at fifteen years old and a regular at New York racetracks from Saratoga to Yonkers Raceway. As soon as he finished high school, he enrolled in a gaming school and learned how to deal everything from blackjack to baccarat and how to work the stick in craps and rake the chips at the roulette wheel. He arrived in Las Vegas in 1979 and established himself as a polished, versatile casino hand at the long-gone Hotel Nevada. Seventeen years later, Avello returned home in a sense, crossing the Strip to the Las Vegas Hilton and an entry-level job writing tickets at its sportsbook. He paid attention to his math. He got comfortable trusting his gut. He learned to dole out premium customer service. Mostly, Avello listened—to his customers, to his horse owner friends, to anyone who had a sliver of information that might be useful in correctly anticipating an outcome.

  “I’ve been around the entire portfolio for quite a bit,” he said of his vocation, “and have learned what a gambler does and his habits.”

  Avello was preparing his Kentucky Derby Futures Bets board, assigning odds to hundreds of horses, many of them who had yet to actually run in a race but were pointed to run in America’s greatest race. It didn’t bring a whole lot of money into the sportsbook. Avello did it as a courtesy to his horse-playing customers and friends, as well as to tip his hat to the pastime that he loved most and that had made him the man he was today. Horses were in his blood, and each summer of his life he made the pilgrimage to Saratoga Springs, New York, to watch races in a place, and in a fashion, befitting the Sport of Kings. Like everyone who was in the least bit devoted to the sport, Avello badly wanted to see another Triple Crown champion but doubted that he ever would.

  As he watched American Pharoah zip down the lane, however, he had an inkling—a welcome one—that he might be wrong. It was too early to post a proposition bet on the Triple Crown, but Avello thought he may have just seen the future Kentucky Derby champ. Twelve days later, eight months prior to the first Saturday in May, American Pharoah opened as the 40-to-1 favorite to wear the blanket of roses at the Wynn Las Vegas.

  Bob Baffert’s primary base was Santa Anita Park, 320 acres of perfect Hollywood backdrop about forty miles northeast of Los Angeles. The track was rimmed by the San Gabriel Mountains that were almost always bathed in sunshine and that made you long for an old-fashioned Western movie. Mornings were especially spectacular as flight after flight of horses took to the track for gallops and breezes amid fresh mountain air. At the corner of the grandstand, near the stretch, was Clockers’ Corner, which was always bustling with trainers and flack-jacketed jockeys who sipped coffee alongside touts in crumpled clothes with the Daily Racing Form beneath their arm and the most tanned, healthy-looking men and women that you can find this side of a magazine fashion shoot. By far, it was the best-looking morning racetrack crowd in the nation. Many of them were horse owners or jockey agents and other industry types. They started each workday here on the apron trading gossip as they sipped lattes and picked at omelets from the only racetrack kitchen whose daily fare resembled haute cuisine.

  This was Baffert’s front porch and watercooler, where he skinned and grinned with jockeys like Gary Stevens but always with an eye on his horses on the track. American Pharoah had come out of the Futurity better than ever. He was thumping his nose against the feed tub, digging out every oat. He was pointed toward another Grade 1 race six days from now, the FrontRunner, right here at his home track. American Pharoah was going to try the one-mile-and-sixteen distance, which meant he had to go two turns for the first time. No matter how primed for endurance a pedigree might suggest, Baffert believed that you could not be certain if you had a horse suited for the classic distances until he proved that he could navigate two turns. To do so took more than speed and agility; it took a sharp mind to heed the cues of a jockey to avoid hazards or get out of trouble when you find it. Some horses could not harness their speed and burned themselves on the backstretch; others grew bored and lost focus.

  Baffert always held his breath when he sent a promising colt or filly out for their first route race. It was where flaws were exposed and hopes dashed. The trainer did not expect American Pharoah to disappoint him. Beside the paddock meltdown in his debut, the colt so far had been a perfect pupil. The only flaw American Pharoah had displayed was nature’s, not his, and that may not have been a flaw at all. First at Del Mar, now here at Santa Anita, the racetrack horse identifier had reported American Pharoah to the Jockey Club as a ridgling, meaning that one of his testicles had failed to descend at puberty. In normal colts, they dropped from the abdomen down the inguinal canal to the scrotum. In ridglings, they either remained in the abdominal cavity or fell partially down the inguinal canal. American Pharoah was sent through the Fasig-Tipton Sale in Saratoga as a colt, and no one in the Baffert barn found any signs that he was anything other than that. It was an uncommon condition widely thought to be handed down through genetics. Several horses in the Seattle Slew line were ridglings, most famously A.P. Indy. His undescended testicle was removed and, after capturing the Belmont Stakes and Breeders’ Cup Classic, he was voted the Horse of the Year in 1992.

  It did not handicap him in the breeding shed, either. When he was retired in 2011 at the age of twenty-two, A.P. Indy had sired more than 135 stakes winners, including champions Mineshaft and Bernardini.

  Whether he had one testicle or two, American Pharoah had Baffert and his staff as upbeat as they had been in years. The trainer was once more the center of attention at Clockers’ Corner and was enjoying it. Earlier that morning, the colt had sizzled five-eighths of a mile in 59.60 in his last breeze before the race.<
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  “He has that extra something that all the good ones have,” Baffert said.

  Baffert had put an old hand, jockey Joe Steiner, on the colt for the breeze. Steiner was a gifted horseman whose opinions were valued after workouts in the morning more than his talents as a jockey were in the afternoon. He had been one of Baffert’s go-to exercise riders in the late 1990s when the trainer was dominating the Triple Crown races and owners were clamoring to put expensive horses in his barn.

  “Have you worked a horse like this in a while?” asked Baffert.

  “It reminds me of the old days,” Steiner said.

  The FrontRunner used to be called the Norfolk Stakes and was the race the West Coast–based two-year-olds used as a tune-up for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, a $2 million race to be held five weeks from now at Santa Anita Park. A relaxed American Pharoah ambled into the paddock like he was stepping beneath the shade of a weeping willow to lie down for a nap. He looked every bit the 1-to-2 favorite that bettors had made him off the blowout at Del Mar. The skittish colt of two months ago was now as grounded and steady as a Clydesdale.

  Espinoza hopped on his back, pointed him toward the tunnel, and just like that, the duo went back at work. The rider knew American Pharoah was a cinch to win this heat, as the colt had beaten a couple of these in the Futurity with Espinoza primarily acting like a passenger. There were seven other colts edging into the gate, and the main threat—Calculator—was outside of him in the Number 8 hole. In the Futurity, the gray had mounted a late run to finish a distant second. Espinoza suspected his rider, Elvis Trujillo, would be a lot closer today. Next to him in the Number 4 post, Martin Garcia was aboard another Baffert-trained colt, Lord Nelson, who had defeated Calculator back in his debut in July but had not raced since.

  It was in races like these that Espinoza not only earned his money but also demonstrated to trainers that he fit with their horse. He wanted to win another Derby, too. He needed to continue to build trust with American Pharoah. He needed to continue the colt’s education as a racehorse. American Pharoah broke perfectly and dragged him to the lead through a quarter mile of 23 seconds before Espinoza gently relaxed and slowed him down. He wanted American Pharoah to hear other horses alongside him, to feel their breath and the dirt flying. He wanted the colt to have a taste of pressure without being intimidated. Skyway, the horse he couldn’t get the mount on for the Futurity, pressed them from the outside through a moderate half mile of 1:11.4. American Pharoah heard him and felt him but never flinched, and Skyway disappeared behind him. Now Calculator glided up on the far turn, looking like he had plenty in the tank to tangle. He pulled even with American Pharoah’s throatlatch at the quarter pole.

  In the clubhouse, Baffert held his breath. He saw American Pharoah slinging around the far turn and asked himself, “Can he go two turns?”

  Espinoza knew he could. He loosened his grip on the colt and scrubbed on his neck with both hands, coaxing a burst that vaulted them a length ahead of Calculator.

  “I encouraged my horse a little,” he said. “He’s young, so I want to teach him that when he hits the stretch, it’s time to go.”

  American Pharoah went. This time, Espinoza had the whip in his right hand and just waved it along his flank, letting him see it more than feel it. The colt’s stride lengthened and they increased their lead by four lengths. Once more, track announcer Trevor Denman was roused: “Calculator is all heart, but this is a scintillating performance by American Pharoah.”

  By the final quarter mile, American Pharoah had run a withering 23.93-second split, with Espinoza back in passenger mode, dusting his rivals. He completed the mile and sixteenth in 1:41.95 and matched the 101 Beyer Speed Figure from Del Mar. One race earlier, two-time Breeders’ Cup winner and champion filly Beholder covered the same ground in 1:42.19 to win the Grade 1 Zenyatta Stakes. Later in the day, the two-year-old filly Angela Renee was timed in at 1:43.45 for her victory in the Grade 1 Chandelier Stakes.

  It was the performance Baffert was hoping for.

  As Baffert walked Espinoza back to the jockeys’ room, getting the download on his rider’s trip, both men were smiling. The trainer had won this stakes race now seven times, but never with a horse like American Pharoah. In a quirk of history perhaps, not a single winner of the Norfolk—now FrontRunner—had ever gone on to win the Derby. The trainer believed that he had the horse to end that drought.

  “He moves really nice and is light on his feet,” Espinoza told the trainer. “He’s one of the best two-year-olds right now.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  BETTER LUCKY THAN SMART

  October 2014

  It had been a difficult five years for Ahmed Zayat on the racetrack as well as off of it. While Zayat put in the hard work of satisfying his creditors and downsizing his operation, his horses were being punished by the racing gods in biblical proportions. The walls of his stable’s office in Hackensack, New Jersey, were filled with winner’s circle photos, but many of them reminded Zayat that if he had found any luck at all recently it was mostly bad.

  The momentum that Pioneerof the Nile was gaining as the sire of American Pharoah could not exorcise the heart pangs Zayat felt when he saw his photo hanging on the wall. He’d been Zayat’s pride and joy at the time, a homebred that he believed could bring home the roses in Zayat’s first try at the Derby in 2009. The colt looked like the winner in the stretch until a 50-to-1 shot named Mine That Bird, owned and trained by cowboys from New Mexico, rode the rail under a local journeymen jockey to a stunning from-last-to-first finish.

  There on another wall was Eskendereya, who went to Louisville for the 2010 Derby as one of the strongest favorites in years off three straight victories, including an eight-and-a-half-length romp in the Fountain of Youth in Florida, followed by a runaway nine-and-three-quarter-length score in the Grade 1 Wood Memorial in New York. Seven days before the race, the colt’s trainer saw some swelling in Eskendereya’s left front and called in the veterinarians, who worked all night on bringing it down. He wasn’t actually lame but his gait was off and his leg was puffed up from the ankle to the knee. He was scratched the following morning and retired with a soft tissue injury not long after the Derby.

  “We sent him to two clinics for diagnostics and I wanted to send him to one more to get a third opinion, because I wasn’t willing to give up,” Zayat said, “but with a soft tissue injury, we pretty much knew he was done. The horse was sound as could be and had been training extremely well. Everything was ideal until it started going downhill when he went to Churchill.”

  He was a top stallion prospect, which would have been more of a consolation if Zayat did not have to sell a share of him to the wine baron Jess Jackson for $7 million that went straight to Fifth Third Bank under the bankruptcy agreement. The picture of Nehro doesn’t begin to tell the story of the following year’s Derby and how the colt got passed in the deep stretch and finished second to Animal Kingdom, a 20-to-1 long shot. It was tough enough that Nehro had already finished second by a neck in both the Louisiana Derby and Arkansas Derby before running at Churchill Downs. Now he had been edged by a horse with a turf pedigree and who had never run before on dirt, a first in the history of the Kentucky Derby.

  In 2012, Zayat’s horses found a couple of new ways to lose. Surely Bodemeister was the colt to snap the hard luck streak. How could the racing gods deny a colt named for the young son of his trainer, Bob Baffert, especially after the colt won the Arkansas Derby by nearly ten lengths? This time the racing gods really hit the Zayat camp with a hammer, allowing Bodemeister to blow a three-length lead at the eighth pole and get caught by I’ll Have Another, who had started from the Number 19 hole, the only post in the 137 previous runnings that had never produced a Derby winner.

  “That was the most crushing,” Zayat said. “I saw Bode crying and Bob was upset. It was just terrible.”

  Two weeks later in Baltimore, Bodemeister blew another three-length lead at the eighth pole and was beaten by a neck by I’ll Ha
ve Another. When Baffert sent Bodemeister back to the barn after the Preakness, Zayat ran a colt by the name of Paynter in the Belmont Stakes. He was a late-developing son of Awesome Again that Baffert believed had earned a shot at the Triple Crown race after leading every step of the way in a race at Pimlico on Preakness Day to win by more than five lengths. Baffert believed this was the colt to deflect the wrath of the racing gods. Baffert had a friend named Paynter who, he told Zayat, was one of the luckiest guys that he ever knew. If Zayat named the promising horse after his friend, Baffert was certain their fortunes would change for the better. Zayat agreed and as the field hit the stretch in the Belmont, it looked like the plan had worked and finally he was heading to the winner’s circle of a Triple Crown race. Paynter had led every step of the way and had a length lead in the stretch. A late run from the colt Union Rags caught him at the wire and Paynter lost by a neck.

  In the span of four years, Zayat had finished second in the Kentucky Derby three times and lost the big favorite a week before the race the other year. Somehow, the hot-blooded Egyptian managed to stay Zen about this unfortunate turn of events.

  “I feel we are very blessed to have the kind of horses that show up in these races,” he said. “It hurts to watch the replays, but I am not sorry about any of it. It’s a fantastic experience and it makes me want to go after it even more.”

  Miserable misfortune, however, was not finished yet with Zayat or his family. In July, Paynter returned east from Baffert’s barn in Del Mar to run in the Haskell Stakes, a Grade 1 $1 million race for three-year-olds at Monmouth Park on the Jersey Shore. Zayat was unable to get away from his Del Mar summer home because his youngest daughter was sick. Baffert had obligations on the West Coast and could not make the trip either. Zayat decided that this was a good opportunity to reward his twenty-year-old son, Justin, for the work he had been doing on behalf of Zayat Stables. Justin was in school at New York University and still learning the horse racing game, but he had shown an aptitude for the business of the sport and shared his father’s passion for horses.