No Need to Make Trainers Jealous

BALTIMORE — As the horses pounded for home in the Kentucky Derby, it was well before the finish line when trainer Bob Baffert realized he wasn’t going to win the race for the third consecutive year.

Baffert started three horses in the Derby, run May 1 at Churchill Downs, but by midstretch, reality drilled him between the eyes. Prime Timber, not kicking in down the lane, finished fourth, beaten by only 2 1/4 lengths. Only a nose separated Prime Timber and Excellent Meeting, Baffert’s tough filly, who was done in by heavy traffic on the far turn. And General Challenge, Baffert’s Santa Anita Derby winner, settled for 11th place after a rugged trip in the first part of the race.

Still, Baffert started screaming at the sixteenth pole. “We were out of it, and I spotted Bob Lewis’ colors,” he said. “It was the first time I ever rooted for a [Wayne] Lukas horse.”

The Derby outcome produced one of the Triple Crown’s greatest ironies: Baffert’s first Derby winner, Silver Charm in 1997, was a horse owned by Bob and Beverly Lewis; two years later, Baffert comes up short in his bid for a record third straight win while Charismatic, a colt owned by the Lewises but trained by Lukas, wins the race.

“Did I out-train the other guys or what?” Lukas gloated the morning after the Derby. “Is that telling Baffert?”

Lukas, who joined the Lewises’ organization in 1993, a couple of years after Baffert, trains about 16 of the Newport Beach couple’s horses. Baffert isn’t sure how many horses he trains for the Lewises--he has been on the road too much lately to have an accurate count--but Lukas guesses it’s about the same number.

“We’re about dead even on horses, and I think it’s because the Lewises are keeping count,” Lukas said. “They’re totally comfortable working with me and Baffert. They’re so comfortable that it’s unbelievable.”

That Bob Lewis is able to expertly juggle Baffert and Lukas is a deft accomplishment. Lewis, who turned 75 Wednesday, is the man in the middle again Saturday, when Pimlico runs the Preakness for the 124th time. With Charismatic, Lukas will be trying to add the second jewel of the Triple Crown (while also running Cat Thief for owner William T. Young), and Baffert, for a change, could be the spoiler with his two fillies--Excellent Meeting and Silverbulletday, although Silverbulletday probably won’t run after drawing the outside post in a 14-horse field.

The Lewises will be in a box seat with Lukas, but Bob Lewis said that if he were running two horses, one with Lukas and one with Baffert, he would sit with one of the trainers and Beverly would sit with the other. That’s how careful the Lewises are with their high-profile trainers, one (Lukas) recently elected to the Racing Hall of Fame, and the other (Baffert) a conditioner who has stood the game on its ear, all the while stealing Lukas’ national thunder the last three years.

“There’s never been anything to suggest that these guys have had a problem working with our horses,” Lewis said. “Bob and his people pick out horses [at sales], and we buy some of them if we’re interested. And Wayne, of course, has that wonderful eye for picking out horses. They come to me with the candidates they pick, and then Beverly and I decide. In all the years we’ve been with Bob and Wayne, there have been no exceptions.”

Bob Lewis said there’s little, if any, conversation between Baffert and Lukas should they suspect their opposite might be planning to run a horse in the same race.

“It’s happened,” Lewis said. “Not a lot, but we’ve run horses with each of them in the same race. I have no problem running against myself in that situation. It’s a way to find out who’s the best horse.”

What Lewis wouldn’t allow--he says it has never happened--is for Baffert and Lukas to bid, on his behalf, on the same horse. At auction, running up your own buying price has never been considered good strategy.

This year started with Exploit, trained by Baffert, being the Lewises’ leading Triple Crown candidate, but that colt suffered his first loss in the San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita on March 13 and was retired a few days later with a chipped knee. Straight Man, another promising 3-year-old Baffert trains for the Lewises, ran out of steam early. Unexpectedly filling the breach was Charismatic, who had won only three of 14 starts, twice running for a $62,500 claiming price, before he won the Derby.

Surprisingly, neither Lukas nor Baffert picked out Charismatic, who was bought by the Lewises as a weanling for $200,000. The Lewises race a small number of horses with four or five other trainers, and one of them, Ray Bell Jr., selected Charismatic. This year’s Derby winner is a half-brother to Tossofthecoin, a promising Bell trainee who was sold to Sid and Jenny Craig for $1 million before finishing last in the 1993 Derby.

Bob Lewis said Bell would have become the trainer of Charismatic had he not had an argument with Tom Bell, the trainer’s father, over the sale of another Lewis horse.

“There were two horses--Charismatic and one other--that Ray Bell would have got, but because of the dispute, I sent them to Wayne,” Lewis said. “I don’t remember why it was Wayne. I think [Baffert] might have had 20 at the time, and Wayne had something like 18, so we decided to balance it out.”

Ray Bell was still attached to Charismatic. Early this year, on behalf of a client, he offered Lukas $80,000 for the colt. Lukas told Bell that Charismatic’s best days were ahead of him.

“Then about 10 days later, the horse shows up in a race running for a $62,500 claiming price,” Bell said. “You can imagine how surprised I was when I saw that.”

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Preakness Stakes

Saturday: 2:30 p.m. PDT, ABC (1:30 p.m.)

THE DRAW: Silverbulletday might not start because of outside post; Charismatic and Cat Thief in good position. Page 10