Even four months late, say this much for the 146th Kentucky Derby: The race itself, and the winner, was Authentic.
Lending a degree of normalcy to the proceedings, Bob Baffert was all over your TV screen -- once from a seated position.
After the first September running of an American classic traditionally carded on the first Saturday in May, horse racing now rotates on its axis again. The sport is back on Baffert Standard Time.
And however dissimilar their styles, like the music of Donna Summer and Johnny Winter, Baffert and "Plain" Ben Jones share the record of training six Kentucky Derby winners. Fittingly perhaps, the man responsible for Triple Crown winners Whirlaway and Citation is joined by the man who gave us American Pharoah and Justify.
For Baffert, Authentic's name goes on the same julep glass as Silver Charm, Real Quiet and War Emblem along with the two Triple Crown winners of the past decade. No asterisk like that associated with 2019 Derby winner Country House: placed first through DQ.
Baffert has as many Kentucky Derby winners as Tom Brady has Super Bowl victories or Michael Jordan has NBA titles. If time is on the trainer's side, Baffert, at 67, could put this record out of reach. Why not go for 12, topping Bill Russell by one as sport's Greatest of All Time?
Remember, Baffert could be sitting on seven, the only trainer to win three Derbys in a row, if Cavonnier had gotten the nod in a photo with Grindstone in 1996.
This was a Derby, albeit on Labor Day weekend, like so many in May I covered in person. We'd go to Louisville talking about another horse, not the eventual winner, only to have Wayne Lukas in the press conference say something like, "This might be my best training job." At which point, having bet on another horse or perhaps one of Lukas' also-rans, I resisted the urge to throw my laptop computer at the silk-suited trainer taking bows.
Baffert is capable of such vanity but not on this day. He openly missed not having longtime aide Jimmy Barnes in the winner's circle. The man usually seen with Baffert wearing sunglasses before or after a big race, Barnes missed this one quite unexpectedly, a late scratch. He broke an arm when stablemate Thousand Words flipped during saddling and fell. Baffert becomes that rare trainer to win a Derby he lost in the paddock.
For a second there, Baffert almost provided an unwitting sidebar. While the winner collected his bouquet of roses, Authentic turned goofy a second and sent people scrambling. Baffert, who because of heart problems experienced on a trip to Dubai seldom leaves California except for the biggest of races -- hence the high visibility for Barnes -- hit the deck. Thankfully, trainer and horse live to fight another day, Thousand Words perhaps joining Authentic in the Preakness starting gate Oct. 3.
Barnes left Churchill Downs in an ambulance at the same time Authentic entered the starting gate. Afterward, Baffert could have used 1,000 words and not masked his feelings for an absent friend: "This is the most emotional. We kept saying, 'Do it for Jimmy.'" On Sunday, Baffert called it "the most crazy 30 minutes I've had in racing."
Now all that remained was winning the race with a horse parked widest of all (post 15) and considered, at least by the bettors, as a cut below odds-on favorite Tiz the Law and Honor A.P. Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith provided a clue, many thought, when choosing Honor A.P., who beat Authentic in the Santa Anita Derby and for whose trainer, John Shirreffs, he had ridden 2005 Derby winner Giacomo and the great Zenyatta.
But getting John Velazquez, and with a tradition of sending out live horses in the Derby, Baffert wasn't slumming. Sensational in morning workouts, Authentic looked better Saturday than in a year that he won early in California, lost a bit of luster in the Santa Anita Derby but regrouped with a last-out Grade 1 win at Monmouth Park in the Haskell.
"He was training lights out," Baffert said. "Just the best he's ever trained. He was our No. 1 pick from the beginning." Getting Velazquez, who won his first Derby for trainer Graham Motion and his second for Todd Pletcher, Baffert ensured the Hall of Fame jockey, "I've got a good one for you."
No matter the race, Baffert does not send out a horse to take back early. Authentic attempted a wire job -- a mile and a quarter, to use a racetrack expression, with no water.
"We all try; You succeed," Humphrey Bogart tells Paul Henreid, both war hero and rival for Ingrid Bergman's affections in "Casablanca." Authentic, unlike Bodemeister, collared by California Chrome while trying to wire them in the 2012 Derby under Mike Smith, succeeded.
This was a new and improved Authentic from one seen in January still putting it together. This one answered the bell when Tiz the Law came coming just like he did in winning the Belmont Stakes and the Travers Stakes. A different, but more predictable, outcome loomed: Tiz the Law, again ridden superbly by young Manny Franco, could not get by.
Velazquez, one of racing's greatest finishers, joined such as Gary Stevens, Calvin Borel and his own agent, Angel Cordero Jr., with three Derby triumphs. Life and death to win the Haskell at 1 1/8 miles, Authentic stopped the clock in 2:00.61, the fastest Derby since Monarchos went 1:59 4-5 in 2001 over an incredibly souped-up surface. Spend a Buck, another loose on the lead, Cordero up, had the same time in the 1985 Derby. Anyone got a problem with that?
Do not underestimate the jockey change. Did Mike Smith, fourth with Honor A.P., leave this one on the table? Smith, as we know from his work with Justify and others, can keep one together, especially one trained by Baffert, as well as any jockey. But a jockey can ride only one horse in the Derby and Mike, as with Pat Day taking Summer Squall over Unbridled in 1990 and Bill Shoemaker choosing Hill Rise instead of Northern Dancer in 1964, went another way.
"When he pulled his stick through to the left hand and got after him, boy, he just leveled out and said, 'They're not going by me today,"' said Barnes, who watched the race on a phone in the ambulance on his way to a hospital
Barnes' Derby experience mirrors Baffert's season -- at post time, the trainer was down to one starter in a year that at one time he had Charlatan, Nadal, Thousand Words, Cezanne and Uncle Chuck also under consideration. Like Tom Bodett in the Motel 6 commercial, he'll leave a light in the window.
"You can be on the floor," said Barnes, a poster child for Derby 146, "and then be up in the sky soaring." About Barnes, "I think he'll need eight screws in the wrist, but he was actually here (at the barn) this morning," Baffert said. "He's a trooper."
Not everyone likes him, but so's the guy who trains Authentic.