Baffert isn’t on course for this Kentucky Derby

What if they held a Kentucky Derby and Bob Baffert didn’t come? Does that mean it’s not an official race? Do they reduce the prize money?

Many sports have signature figures. Jerry West is the NBA logo. Golf is Tiger Woods, 24/7. Baseball is a syringe.

Horse racing’s signature is a head of shocking white hair and a pair of Hollywood sunglasses. They both belong to Bob Baffert.

Since Baffert stormed onto the national thoroughbred scene in the mid-1990s, accompanying the large group of highly successful horses he trained and showing a quick wit and an eye for fun, the sport has never been quite the same. The bluebloods and stuffed shirts may not have liked him, but for a while, they sure couldn’t beat him.

But after years of feast, there is now semi-famine for Baffert.

On Saturday at Churchill Downs, they will run for the roses without Baffert being anywhere nearby. That will mark the first time that has happened since 1996.

“Not sure where I’ll watch from,” he says. “Probably at home. Maybe we’ll go to Vegas. That has always sounded like fun.”

He really doesn’t have a choice. His stable currently has no horse either ready or able, not even for a run in Friday’s Kentucky Oaks or on the undercard on Derby Day.

“It’s kind of an empty feeling,” Baffert says.

Baffert was only a few years out of quarter-horse training in 1996 when he took Cavonnier and Semoran to Churchill Downs for his first-ever big race on the first Saturday of May. Cavonnier finished second, Baffert was hooked, and so was horse racing.

Since that time, Baffert has sent 16 3-year-olds to the Churchill starting gate and won the Derby three times, with Silver Charm in 1997, Real Quiet in 1998 and War Emblem in 2002. In many ways, he has been the king of the Triple Crown. Four times, he has won two legs of it and three of those times he sent horses into the Belmont with a shot at the ever-elusive Triple, not achieved since Affirmed in 1978.

In 1998, Real Quiet was edged out so closely at the wire in the Belmont that Baffert measures the margin of loss with thumb and forefinger, an inch apart.

“I still watch the film,” he says, “and I still think he’s going to win.”

After War Emblem in 2002, Baffert’s personal Derby slide began.

In 2003, his Indian Express finished 14th. In 2004, he didn’t even get a horse into the starting gate because he had to scratch Wimbledon at the last second. His Sort It Out did not in 2005, finishing 17th. And in 2006, despite Baffert’s having three entries, his horses ended up ninth, 16th and 17th.

Last year, he was there with horses on the undercard but had nothing in the Derby.

This year, he won’t even be a wallflower at racing’s biggest dance.

“My goal has always been to win it,” he says, “but it is also nice just to be there.”

So, like Rick Neuheisel and Charlie Weis, Baffert is rebuilding. His absence at the Derby is symptomatic of a bigger problem and a deeper feeling about how and where he has been doing business.

Soon, Baffert will be taking most of his saddles and going East. Barn 1C at Santa Anita still will be a Baffert headquarters, but for the foreseeable future, the most active Baffert stables will be at Belmont and Saratoga. For a while, their gain will be California’s loss.

Last August, unhappy with the new synthetic surface at Del Mar, and suddenly faced with a winning drought unlike anything he had experienced, Baffert packed up and headed for upstate New York and Saratoga.

“There was one jockey agent at Del Mar who, every time he’d see me, called me Dead Man Walking,” Baffert says.

The change of scenery changed his fortunes. He won several stakes races at Saratoga, then brought home $4 million in purses with two wins in the Breeders’ Cup at Monmouth Park.

Still, there was trouble in River City, and it wasn’t spelled with a capital P. For Baffert, it was STS, synthetic track surfaces, which is a recent California initiative and, as far as Baffert is concerned, the push that is sending him back East.

“I didn’t object at first when this was the big deal,” he says. “If you spoke out against it, you were vilified, like you were anti-safety. Now, I look back on it and it seems clear that if we had just taken the $8 million to $10 million we spent on each of our tracks around here and just put it into improving the dirt we had, we’d be fine.”

Baffert says the synthetic tracks are mostly good for claiming races and that, even if you have a horse that wins, you have no real idea how good it is because the track slows everybody down and equalizes the field.

“The races are all the same,” he says. “Start, plod along, turn and finish. Pretty boring.”

Baffert seems to speak more out of frustration than anger. He is 55 now and has had incredible success -- leading national money-winning trainer four years in a row, starting in 1998. Last year, with his late Breeders’ Cup flourish, he ended up a respectable No. 11 in the country with just over $7 million in purses. Now, he is barely in the top 30 with $1.09 million.

So the mandate seems obvious: Go east, young man.

“There’s nothing like winning races on the East Coast,” he says. “They are more important there.”

Asked if he had a choice between winning the Wood Memorial, a major Eastern Derby prep race, or the Santa Anita Derby, the West’s counterpart to the Wood, Baffert doesn’t even pause.

“The Wood’s bigger,” he says.

Baffert says he understands that California will have to give the synthetic surfaces an extended try, because of the money invested. He also says he doesn’t think they will last five years.

As for the Kentucky Derby, Baffert says he’ll do everything he can to get back to what he calls the most expensive piece of real estate in the world, the Churchill Downs winner’s circle.

“My kids have never been there,” says the father of five. “I want them to experience that.”

Now that would be a signature moment for the sport.

--

Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. For previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.