Baffert Playing Futurity Field

Rival trainers can take little comfort after hearing trainer Bob Baffert assessing his crop of 2-year-olds.

“This is the deepest group I’ve ever had,” said Baffert, who will run three of them--Flame Thrower, Arabian Light and Glorious Bid--today in the $250,000 Del Mar Futurity as he tries to win the seaside track’s closing-day stake for the fifth consecutive year. No other trainer has won the race more than twice in succession.

With 31 victories, Baffert has more than doubled the victory total of the next closest trainer at Del Mar, and four of those victories have come from his Futurity trio. Flame Thrower, the expected favorite in today’s nine-horse field, made his debut at Del Mar on July 26, the season’s opening day, and after defeating maidens he returned Aug. 23 to win the Best Pal Stakes by 2 3/4 lengths. Arabian Light also is undefeated in two starts--a maiden win at Hollywood Park and a five-length victory in the Graduation Stakes for California-breds Aug. 2. It took Glorious Bid three races to break his maiden, the win coming here Aug. 19.

“I’ve got nine or 10 2-year-olds in the barn that have the potential to be Grade I winners,” Baffert said. “That’s if they all stay healthy. You just hold your breath with young horses.”

Baffert’s first Kentucky Derby winner, Silver Charm, won the Del Mar Futurity in 1996. Baffert’s 1998 Derby winner, Real Quiet, didn’t run in the 1997 Futurity, but he still won the seven-furlong stake with Souvenir Copy. His next two Futurity wins came with Worldly Manner in 1998 and Forest Camp last year.

Worldly Manner ran seventh in the 1999 Derby, but by then he was running for Dubai’s Sheik Mohammed, who had bought him from John and Betty Mabee for a reported $5 million. Forest Camp, who won Saturday’s Pirate’s Bounty Stakes for trainer Eduardo Inda, never won another race for Baffert, who lost that colt and all the rest of Aaron Jones’ horses in an owner-trainer breakup early this year.

“Forest Camp’s a fast horse,” Baffert said, “but I never thought he’d be more than a sprinter, and that’s where they’ve got him headed this year, to the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. What’s really helped this year is the horses I got from [Prince Ahmed Salman’s] Thoroughbred Corp. They’ve filled the void after the Jones deal.”

Arabian Light, who runs for Thoroughbred Corp., was bought at a March auction for $700,000, easily making the son of Fly So Free and Heartlight the most expensive of Baffert’s three Futurity starters. Flame Thrower and Glorious Bid, who also came out of sales for unraced 2-year-olds, cost $270,000 and $250,000, respectively.

“At this stage, going seven-eighths of a mile, I have to give Flame Thrower the edge,” Baffert said. “But as they stretch out, going two turns, Arabian Light should be a good one. He reminds me a lot of Captain Steve [third in last year’s Futurity, but later the winner of the Hollywood Futurity and this year’s Swaps Stakes].”

Notes

The Bob Baffert-trained Chilukki, last year’s champion 2-year-old filly, is entered in today’s California Equine Retirement Foundation Handicap. Since her undefeated string ended when she ran second to Cash Run in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, Chilukki has won twice but is winless in three graded stakes. She won the Sorrento and the Del Mar Debutante at Del Mar last year. . . . Ireland-based Coolmore Stud, the partnership of Michael Tabor and John and Susan Magnier, spent $6.8 million to buy a Storm Cat colt at Keeneland’s fall yearling sale. The colt’s dam, Hum Along, also foaled Storm Song, who won an Eclipse award after winning the 1996 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies race. The Storm Cat colt, who brought the sixth-highest price ever paid for a horse at Keeneland, was consigned to the sale by Will Farish’s Lane’s End Farm.