And now back to our regularly scheduled programming..... several observations on the whole sorted lame affair.
Baffert is historically known for not arriving to the barn at the crack of dawn.
As the post race presser wrapped up a few journalists came up and asked what time they should show up on Sunday, 8 am was the response. Most likely he gave instructions to not take the horse out until he arrived. He gets there just before and takes the horse out of his stall for the first time, gives him a few circuits inside the barn then steps outside to show him off.
Let me regress back to a similar Sunday morning in 1987, the setting - Monmouth Park backstretch barn number 1. I was a young groom of the first Crafty Prospector 2yr old run and trained by her breeder that had just broken her maiden at 4 to 1 first asking the day before. Full of joy and cash (what is the statue of limitations on red boarding?) I was out on the town with our exercise rider until early morning. Seeing that Sunday was normally a walk the shredrow day for our barn we hoped to arrive before the trainer showed up. Lo and behold when we pulled up, they had the filly already out of the stall bandages off and jogging on the concrete to see how she came out of the race. In our case fine and luckily the tardiness was overlooked.
So Baffert was more than embarrassed, caught unawares and scrambling for the right words for which there were none except scratches????
One trick of the trade that our exercise rider learned (a former one-eyed jocky from Belize I kid you not and a top-notch horseman) was to cut a circular section of a beer can and place it over a pad on a horses' heel before applying the rundown bandages. He used it on those prone to running down (burning heels) even through the standard gauze wrap or for off tracks which often burned through like a warm knife cutting butter. He just said never tell the trainer who wouldn't approve of such gypsy methods but it worked like a charm. A suggested change of equipment for Justify: "beer cans on", even a 5 time Derby winning trainer can improve his craft!
[
www.belizeanjourneys.com]
check out the slideshow at the bottom
