Baffert Tries to Keep His Crown in Sprint

After trainer Bob Baffert had paid $30,000 for Thirty Slews at a yearling auction in Lexington, Ky., he loaded the horse into a van bound for Los Alamitos Race Course in Orange County.

“That was probably the first time somebody ever bought a horse at Keeneland and shipped him to Los Alamitos,” Baffert said.

Los Alamitos at the time was not known for having thoroughbreds on the premises. The year was 1988 and Baffert was switching to thoroughbreds after a successful quarter horse career highlighted by Gold Coast Express winning the equivalent of horse of the year in 1986.

Thirty Slews was the first thoroughbred bought by Baffert, a 40-year-old University of Arizona graduate.

Saturday, on the $10-million, seven-race Breeders’ Cup card at Santa Anita, Thirty Slews will try to win the Sprint for the second consecutive year.

The Sprint has been traditionally the toughest Breeders’ Cup race to handicap, and this year there is the typical hodge-podge. Thirty Slews, winless in only three starts since he won the Sprint at Gulfstream Park last fall, won’t even be favored.

Thirty Slews’ last two workouts have been timed in 45 4/5 for four furlongs and 1:11 for six, both the fastest at Santa Anita for those distances on those days.

“We need a good post position, and he has to fire,” Baffert said of his chances on Saturday. “He won from No. 8 a year ago. With 14 in the race this time, anything from (No.) 5 through 10 should be good. The post is awfully important. The horses in the field are the best sprinters around. Any of them can beat the others on a given day.”

Baffert went overboard the day he bought Thirty Slews. He had gone to Keeneland looking for a horse in the $10,000-$15,000 range. Thirty Slews, a son of Slewpy and grandson of Seattle Slew, might have cost even more, but at the sale he had the stigma of being a ridgling, a horse with an undescended testicle. At Los Alamitos, a stablehand asked Baffert how much he had paid for the yearling.

“Thirty . . . slews,” Baffert said, and that’s how the gray 6-year-old got his name.

Baffert had overextended himself at Keeneland, spending money that was to have gone to help the trainer and his wife, Sherry, buy a house. So Baffert turned to some familiar quarter horse clients--Mitch DeGroot, James Streelman, Mike Pegram and Denny Boer--and they took the horse off his hands.

“I like training for those guys,” Baffert said. “They’re lucky, and they turn me loose. This year, in the quarter horses, they’re running Four Forty Blast, who’s the top 3-year-old colt in the country.”

Off the financial hook, Baffert was still puzzled by Thirty Slews’ reluctance to run. “He was growing too fast, for one thing,” Baffert said. “He was moving terrible. He looked like a bear cub.”

Thirty Slews went from a ridgling to a gelding before his first race, precluding a possible stallion career. “He was so heavy, I thought it was worth a try,” Baffert said. “He wouldn’t still be running if we hadn’t done it.”

A gelding winning one of these rich races is not the best advertisement for the Breeders’ Cup. In the first nine years, 40 starters have been geldings, and Thirty Slews was only the second to win, following Great Communicator’s victory in the Breeders’ Cup Turf in 1988.

Thirty Slews’ record--17 races in five years--suggests that he is unsound, but Baffert said that except for a bruised hoof that sidelined him for four months in 1990, the horse has had no problems. Breathing problems, not moving problems, have contributed to Thirty Slews’ lean record. Early in 1992, Thirty Slews had a laryngoplasty, an operation that prevents a paralyzed cartilage from obstructing a horse’s breathing passage.

Five months after the surgery, Thirty Slews resumed racing, winning the Big Crosby Handicap at Del Mar. That was the start of a three-race winning streak that included the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

Baffert is discounting Eddie Delahoussaye’s decision to ride Cardmania instead of Thirty Slews in the Sprint. Delahoussaye has ridden Thirty Slews in six of his seven victories, including the Sprint. Cardmania, 12th in last year’s Sprint, ended a 17-race losing streak by winning the Ancient Title Handicap at Santa Anita on Oct. 17.

Baffert has hired Kent Desormeaux, second to Mike Smith on the national money list, but Desormeaux has never won a Breeders’ Cup race. Delahoussaye won two last year, with A.P. Indy and Thirty Slews, and has five victories overall.

“If a horse isn’t ready, it doesn’t make any difference who rides him,” Baffert said. “These are horse races, not jockey races.”

Standing at least 17 hands (68 inches), Thirty Slews weighs about 1,200 pounds and is one of the biggest horses stabled at Santa Anita. He’s called “Jaws” around the barn.

“This horse has been like a project for me,” Baffert said. “So many times I’ve mismanaged him, but he’s overcome all the mistakes. He’ll never run for a claiming price, I’ll tell you that. I’ve got too much compassion for him to do that.”