American Pharoah Page 9

  Bob and Jill Baffert are nothing if not modern and each opened social media accounts like many do to communicate better with friends and business associates. It also opened them up to hearing the unflattering things that were said about them in Santa Anita Park’s track kitchen or the bar rooms ringing Del Mar. It’s not pleasant and most ignore the ugliest sentiments and dismiss them as isolated. Baffert found himself in a social media firestorm in the last week of 2012, however, when a former stakes-caliber racehorse he trained named Tweebster had to be put down after suffering multiple fractures in his left front leg in a cheap claiming race at Santa Anita.

  Not many horses from the Baffert barn ran in $12,500 claiming races, especially ones that had finished third in the Native Diver Handicap, a Grade 3 race, and competed in stakes races as recently as three months before, as Tweebster had. Even rarer was to see a horse trained by Baffert have only two timed workouts in the two months since its last race. Baffert decided to issue a statement through Santa Anita that said he dropped Tweebster into the bottom ranks of racing in the hopes of getting the horse a “confidence booster” in an easy race. He acknowledged the criticism on Twitter and other social media that pointed out gaps in Tweebster’s workout schedule and his precipitous drop as telltale signs of a lame horse.

  “I understand a severe drop in class can indicate a horse is unsound, but I assure you that was not the case with Tweebster,” Baffert said.

  He said that Tweebster was thoroughly examined by the state veterinarian that morning and found to be perfectly sound going into the race. He did not respond to a request to share Tweebster’s veterinary records, to detail his medication history, or to explain the gap in the horse’s workout patterns.

  “The death of any horse on the racetrack is hard to accept,” Baffert said. “When that horse is one who you saw and took care of every day, the pain is physically gut-wrenching. While I realize some people are going to think what they want, I want to express my feelings and deepest regret over the loss of a horse for whom I had a great deal of affection.”

  Baffert went viral again four months later when word came that the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) was investigating the sudden deaths of seven horses he trained over a span of sixteen months. Thoroughbreds rarely die suddenly: A 2010 study in the Equine Veterinary Journal found that sudden death occurred in 9 percent of fatalities in California. In four of the Baffert-trained horses, cardiac or heart problems were the cause; two died of internal bleeding, and another had a massive abdominal/thoracic cavity hemorrhage, according to the necropsies. He cooperated with investigators but hired a crisis management firm to help him navigate the negative press.

  In November, the horse racing board issued a final report that Baffert had been giving every horse in his barn a thyroid hormone without ever checking to see if any of them had a thyroid problem. The drug thyroxine was so routinely prescribed in the Baffert barn that it was dispensed for one of the horses a week after the horse had died. Baffert acknowledged directing his veterinarians to use thyroxine on all his horses, which is in conflict with the policy of the American Association of Equine Practitioners, the industry’s most influential veterinary group, which says treatments “should be based upon a specific diagnosis and administered in the context of a valid and transparent owner-trainer-veterinarian relationship.” Baffert told the investigators that he thought the medication would help “build up” his horses. This came as a surprise because the drug is generally associated with weight loss. He said he quit using the drug after the seventh horse died. At least one study indicated that the drug can cause “cardiac alterations” in horses. In summarizing his report to the board, CHRB’s equine medical director, Dr. Rick Arthur, said he had no conclusive explanation of how seven horses belonging to one trainer dropped dead during a sixteen-month period.

  “Statistically, it is extremely abnormal,” Arthur said. “We couldn’t find anything. It doesn’t change the fact that we don’t have an answer. It does say there is something wrong here.”

  The board, however, ultimately found no evidence that any rules or regulations had been violated, which said plenty about how loosely regulated the sport is and how a wide array of questionable tactics would be considered permissible. After the report’s release, Baffert claimed vindication: “I’m gratified that CHRB completed its investigation and found there was no wrongdoing,” he wrote on his Twitter account.

  It took an unfortunate experience with a small-time grifter for Baffert to swear off social media altogether and to look inward for how the rest of his career was going to evolve. Jonathan Pippin, a twenty-seven-year-old Ohio man, was able to convince Bob and Jill Baffert that there was a conspiracy among racing officials and media members to tarnish the trainer’s reputation. He was a career con man who sold shares of horses he didn’t own to unsuspecting victims at some of the cheapest racetracks in the nation. He made his way west and somehow gained the confidence of the Bafferts, managing to get an invitation to their home on the weekend of the Santa Anita Handicap, one of the West Coast’s premier races.

  “How Pippin traveled from a world of bottom-level claimers at Thistledown and Mountaineer Park to the Santa Anita Handicap winner’s circle alongside Game On Dude and American racing’s most famous trainer is a tale of deceit, opportunism, and unmitigated gall,” wrote Ray Paulick, who broke the story for the online PaulickReport.com. “It’s a bewildering story of social media gone wrong, fake e-mail accounts, online bullying, secretly recorded tapes and voice changing machines.”

  It was, indeed, a remarkable tale of how Pippin dummied up e-mails allegedly from media members saying they were out to get Baffert, created Twitter accounts to harass any perceived critics, and posing as a lawyer, contacted some people at their homes. Pippin employed a voice changing machine and called reporters, claiming to have hours of recordings from the Baffert barn. It took a while, but Baffert started to suspect Pippin was not who he said he was and hired a private investigator and an attorney. In the widely read August 11, 2014, PaulickReport.com story, Pippin laid out how he gained the trainer’s and his wife’s trust and tried to make money off them. Baffert has refused to address it directly, but he did indicate that he was embarrassed by the episode.

  He needed to appreciate the opportunity the arrival of American Pharoah had presented to him. Baffert could win his fourth Kentucky Derby. He could be the trainer of the twelfth Triple Crown champion and the first since Affirmed thirty-seven years ago. To do so, he needed to put blinkers on, to focus on the horse, his family, and his barn. No distractions.

  Baffert was worried about American Pharoah’s poor performance in his debut at Del Mar. For all the colt’s talent, he was a slow, sometimes stubborn learner, and often hard to handle. He earned the nickname pendejo around the barn which, in Spanish, translated into something like “idiot.” Baffert recognized that he was a well-built horse who wanted to go fast—a good thing on the racetrack but not around the barn. So he decided to write the debut off as a bad day at school for a young horse. American Pharoah had been rank in the paddock and just run off. Baffert thought he should have schooled him more, walked him over there to the paddock on an afternoon of a race, and let him get used to the sights and sounds of race day. He’d do more of that beginning now. Baffert had fit American Pharoah with blinkers, or cups on his eyes, believing if he took away the colt’s peripheral vision he would focus on what he was doing and relax easier. He also wore a shadow roll on the bridge of his nose to keep him from seeing the shadows below him on the ground. Nine days after his debut, the colt returned to the track for a breeze without blinkers and cotton stuffed in his ears. The latter was an old quarter horse trick that Baffert had employed previously on a handful of highly strung Thoroughbreds. American Pharoah ripped off a powerful four furlongs in 48 seconds like he was strolling in his sleep.

  Baffert thought American Pharoah was too good for another maiden race for non-winners. Instead, he circled the Del Mar Futurity for American Phar
oah’s next race. He rarely tossed a maiden into a high-quality stakes race, especially one that had finished a well-beaten fifth the only time he had ever run, but Baffert felt good about it.

  Now all he needed was to find a new rider for American Pharoah. Martin Garcia had neither a winning nor a fun experience with the colt. Both colt and rider needed a change.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A ROCKET SHIP!

  September 3, 2014

  It already had been an eventful closing day at Del Mar for Victor Espinoza. He was sitting in the gate atop a two-year-old named Visitation, awaiting the bell for the Oak Tree Juvenile, when the colt next to him by the name of Increase launched his rider, Fernando Perez, into the air and started swirling and kicking like a bucking bull and startling the other horses. Espinoza’s mount was banged against the stall; two other colts broke through the gate and ran off. All three were scratched, including Visitation, sending Espinoza back to the jockey’s room with his tack in hand and a smile as bright as a lighthouse beaming from a face as cracked and weathered as an old saddle. Nothing much ever got under Espinoza’s skin, and in a race an hour later he was looking forward to climbing on the back of a colt trained by Bob Baffert named American Pharoah in the $300,000 Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity.

  Espinoza didn’t know much about the colt. He had only picked up the mount a couple of days ago after the field of nine was entered and Baffert found himself without a rider. Espinoza knew he was not Baffert’s first choice to ride the colt, or even his second or third. He had not done much business with the trainer recently. Martin Garcia was the barn’s first-call rider, but he was on another Baffert horse, Holiday Camp. Gary Stevens, a close friend of Baffert’s, was getting a knee replacement and was unavailable. Rafael Bejarano and Mike Smith, two jockeys Baffert liked to use, were already on other horses for the Del Mar Futurity. Baffert was out of options and Espinoza didn’t have any.

  His agent, Brian Beach, had been working the trainer Mark Casse about getting Espinoza on his horse Skyway, who had just won the Best Pal Stakes and whose rider Stewart Elliott was out with an injury. Casse chose Corey Nakatani instead.

  “You still open?” Baffert asked Beach in the Del Mar racing office shortly before entries to the Futurity were taken. “I’m thinking of running a horse who is sort of a problem child.”

  Baffert had been thinking of War Emblem, who had been hands down the most hateful horse he had ever been around: “He was mean, didn’t want anyone around him, savage.” The colt could run, however, and Espinoza somehow got along with him.

  “Sure,” replied Beach.

  Beach flashed back to a July morning, leaning against the rail with Baffert taking in the sea air when a big bay colt blew by.

  “This is my best two-year-old,” Baffert had told him.

  The previous month in his debut, however, American Pharoah looked merely ordinary when he finished a well-beaten fifth behind two horses that ran past him and were entered today in the Futurity—the runner-up Iron Fist and fourth-place finisher Calculator. The winner, Om, however, had to miss the race with a minor injury, perhaps a result of going too fast too early in his career. Two-year-olds were still growing. Baffert also had told Espinoza that American Pharoah had left his race in the paddock but that he had had ample schooling in the paddock since and was becoming a quiet horse. The trainer also showed him the cotton that he was going to put into the colt’s ears and gave him a single, confident instruction: “Let him run.”

  On the puzzling, if not negative, side, was the fact that American Pharoah was a winless horse trying the deepest water of his infant career and Baffert was not even at the racetrack. He had gotten a jump on getaway day and headed to Los Angeles with Jill and Bode to move back into his home. It wasn’t exactly the show of support for what you have proclaimed to be the best two-year-old you ever had in your barn. Maybe Baffert didn’t expect to get his photo taken in the winner’s circle after the race. It had been a quiet meet for Baffert, with his barn winning only twelve races. For the first time in many summers, he was out of contention for winning the meet’s training title.

  Espinoza, however, refused to read too much into the conflicting evidence. In fact, he was in the midst of a remarkable mid-career rejuvenation; he was embracing the role fate played in it and was choosing whimsy over worry to stay happy. The previous year, Espinoza didn’t have a Futurity mount but felt compelled to stay and watch the race because there was a colt in the field named California Chrome. One morning earlier in the Del Mar meet, Espinoza had been working a horse on the racetrack when he saw a flash of white blow by him. He saw the ivory face, a blaze the width of his snout, and the matching socks—the “chrome” that figured in its name. The colt’s narrow frame and playfulness left little doubt he was a two-year-old. When the colt got to running, however, Espinoza was transfixed. He hit the ground softly, as if he were skipping on talcum powder. Espinoza asked around and found that the horse’s name was California Chrome. He didn’t usually study the Daily Racing Form or pore over video in preparation for races. He rode on instinct, a rider who let the horse tell him how he should be ridden, but Espinoza did go and watch replays of California Chrome’s previous races and liked the way he fought.

  “I fell crazy for that horse,” he said. “I told Brian that someday I’d like to ride him.”

  He watched intently as the colt lined up against ten of the best two-year-olds in California. Nearing the far turn of the seven-furlong race, California Chrome hurtled forward as if sprung from a slingshot. His rider, Alberto Delgado, decided to split horses in the stretch, but the colt took an accidental whip to his face from the jockey of a rival, stopping his momentum. They finished two lengths behind the winner, in sixth place. Espinoza was even more impressed—most horses would have quit running after a whip to the face.

  Two months later, the colt’s trainer, Art Sherman, called Beach and asked him if Espinoza was available to ride in the King Glorious Stakes. Sherman, seventy-seven, was beyond the twilight of his career. He cherished his naptime and confessed to spending too much time with morning television. Sherman also was at the opposite end of the spectrum as Bob Baffert, training twenty-five to forty horses at a time for middle-class owners trying, but mostly failing, to break even as they experienced some thrills and had some laughs hoping for a home-run horse. In California Chrome, Sherman had found his and did not want to screw it up. He had ridden Espinoza at Golden Gate Fields in Northern California when the jockey was first starting out twenty years ago. He was looking for a “steady rider” for California Chrome, one who would get out of the way of the best horse Sherman ever had in his barn.

  Beach remembered his conversation with Espinoza about the fast colt with “all that white.” He said absolutely. California Chrome won the next six races with Espinoza in the irons, including the Derby and the Preakness. Just three months earlier, Espinoza had hustled Sherman’s California Chrome out of the starting gate for the 146th running of the Belmont Stakes for his second crack at sweeping the Triple Crown. He swung his colt into the stretch with a shot, but Chrome was out of gas and fought hard to finish fourth. Instead of bringing home horse racing’s twelfth Triple Crown champion, Espinoza and California Chrome joined twelve other would-be champions who could not get to the finish line first in the Belmont Stakes.

  Espinoza slipped off California Chrome that evening with a smile and gave the colt a long nuzzle. As soon as he came out of the gate, Espinoza knew he didn’t have the same colt beneath him that had emphatically run off with the Derby and Preakness. Horse and rider were in unfamiliar territory—behind and inside other horses with dirt spraying the colt’s chest. Espinoza knew California Chrome preferred launching just off the flank of horses from the outside. Worse than that, however, he sensed a dangerous rival by the name of Tonalist, who was floating ahead of him on cruise control. Beneath him, Espinoza felt something he had never felt from California Chrome in his six previous starts: not enough horse.

  “He was empty
,” Espinoza said.

  As they pursued Tonalist, Espinoza tried to rouse California Chrome by swinging to the outside. For an instant, it looked as if that had done the trick. His colt found a rocket boost that sent him into orbit around the front-runners as he headed into the final turn. Tonalist, however, was gobbling up ground like a John Deere combine at harvest time, and his rider, Joel Rosario, felt a rumble beneath him, one that he liked a lot. He knew that he was going to win. Behind him, Espinoza knew that his magical run was not going to end in the history books. It was going to be interrupted atop a noble but dog-tired horse.

  “He’s one of the best horses I’ve ever ridden,” said Espinoza afterward, disappointed but still smiling and at peace. He and his colt had discovered again what eleven others before them had in the previous thirty-six years: Winning the Triple Crown is really, really hard. “It’s tough for California Chrome to come back in three weeks and run a mile and a half.”