For Baffert, This Isn’t Favorite Part of the Job

As Point Given’s two handlers made the long walk with the colt from barn 33 to the Churchill Downs paddock, an orange blimp floated overhead.

“Monster.com” was the message plastered across the side of the airship.

Point Given, winner of the Santa Anita Derby and the 3-year-old jewel in trainer Bob Baffert’s barn, was a monster once removed Saturday. The new monster on the block was Monarchos, as the Kentucky Derby returned to normal. The favorite--this time, Point Given at9-5--went down in flames again. That’s 21 favorites that have capsized in 22 years. The only exception was Fusaichi Pegasus last year.

Coming off the track after Point Given had finished fifth and his other horse, Congaree, had run third, Baffert said little to jockey Gary Stevens. There was not much analysis required for a horse that was honestly and badly beaten. In defeat, Point Given had expended little energy. He didn’t look tired. He wasn’t blowing hard. A mile and a quarter is supposed to knock a horse out, but instead Point Given had the look of a horse that had just cantered through Central Park.

“You weren’t doing it easy early on,” Baffert said to Stevens.

Stevens agreed.

They were at a doorway in the tunnel leading off the track now, and Baffert was going one way, Stevens another.

“We’ll just have to regroup, buddy,” Baffert said in parting. The trainer headed for a small TV set, surrounded by bettors, many of whom had already torn up their tickets on Point Given.

“When they turned for home, both of my horses had already been running a pretty fast pace,” Baffert said. “Gary said he wasn’t handling the track. At the eighth pole, I didn’t like the way Point Given was looking.”

Congaree, ridden by Victor Espinoza in his first Derby try, was on the lead then, but only by a half-length and Monarchos and his jockey, Jorge Chavez, were coming with a vengeance. Point Given, who was second, 1 1/2 lengths behind Congaree, at the quarter pole, was a spent horse.

There was no reason to think that the Churchill Downs strip would be Point Given’s undoing. He had run second here, losing by only a nose to Macho Uno, in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in November, and in two workouts here since the Santa Anita Derby, he had rattled off brilliant times. Traditionally, the Churchill Downs strip changes on Derby day, but Saturday it really changed. It wasn’t a racetrack, it was the 405, and three track records fell earlier on the card before Monarchos’ winning time of 1:59 4/5, second only to Secretariat’s 1:59 2/5 in 1973.

To their credit, neither Baffert nor Stevens blamed the surface.

“It wasn’t that,” Baffert said.

Stevens didn’t even like the way Point Given warmed up.

“He was sharp mentally,” he said, “but every step he took was ka-boom, ka-boom, ka-boom.”

The outside post in the 17-horse field had not been a problem. Although Point Given broke to his right, bumping Monarchos as he left the gate, Stevens was able to cut over in front of horses, and going into the first turn they found themselves in a perfect spot, in the second tier of horses and only three horses off the fence.

Down the backstretch, Point Given settled into seventh place, but Stevens had another sense of foreboding.

“He usually gets very, very fluid for me at that point,” Stevens said. “But he wasn’t this time. For the first time since I’ve been riding him, I had to give him encouragement to pick it up down the backside.”

The horses in front of Point Given were on a suicidal tear. Songandaprayer’s half-mile time of :44 4/5 was the fastest in Derby history. So was his six-furlong clocking of 1:09 1/5.

“It’s possible that I used my horse too much,” Stevens said. “Hindsight is 20-20, and maybe I should have just sat back and made one solid run. But I still think I rode my race and had my horse where he needed to be.”

Something Baffert said last week had stuck in Stevens’ head.

“If Congaree’s a length and a half ahead of you at the eighth pole, he’s going to win the race,” Baffert had said.

So Stevens had Point Given hound his stablemate, never dropping more than two lengths behind Congaree, but in the process they were sucked in to the debilitating pace.

“My horse picked a tough day not to show up,” Stevens said. “After the Santa Anita Derby, I said that that was the most impressive race a horse of mine had ever run, and I still say that. But he didn’t do that today. It was as if he had said, ‘I’m not running today, pal.’ ”

In the jockeys’ room early in the day, Stevens watched all those sizzling times the record-breaking horses were running and began to rub his hands and salivate over the possibilities.

“I thought that my horse might break Secretariat’s record,” he said.

Early last year, at the Eclipse Awards dinner in Los Angeles, Stevens had presented the best-jockey trophy for 1999 to Chavez. On Saturday, Stevens was handing out compliments instead of bric-a-brac to the same rider.

“He rode a great race,” Stevens said.

Baffert suggested that the heat may have contributed to Point Given’s lethargy. At post time, the temperature was a humid 81 degrees.

“It was pretty hot,” Baffert said. “It was tough on some horses out there.”

Congaree, who went into the race off only four starts but in his last race had beaten Monarchos by 2 3/4 lengths in the Wood Memorial, was nosed out for second by Invisible Ink.

“At the half-mile pole, he wanted to go,” Espinoza said. “I had to fight him and take a strong hold. We moved up and made the [lead], but at the end, he just got outrun.”

Point Given had a bead on Congaree with a quarter-mile left, but there was one problem: He was being inhaled by Monarchos. After Monarchos dusted off Point Given, he went to work on Baffert’s other horse, passing Congaree with about a sixteenth of a mile to go.

“Monarchos just went flying by,” Stevens said. “Once he got rolling, he turned both of us into spectators.”