2/5-6 (SA): Monica, Pasqual (G2's), Thunder Rd (G3); Lewis, Virgenes (G3's)
 

I wonder how long Baffert’s owners will hold out and keep their potential Derby horses with him.

If there ends up being a trainer switch on any of these horses, do the points from the prep races get retroactively assigned to those horses?

Meanwhile, I wonder if Oaklawn isn't clawing up enough money for a multi-million dollar purse boost for the Oaklawn Stakes on Derby weekend. They might even be able to split the race into 2 divisions...

I believe those points have been given to the second place finisher.

I don't

I haven’t seen the answer to this but it would undermine the Baffert ban if they retroactively assigned the points if the horse switches trainers.

For example, you let Baffert train the horse up until two week before the Derby, switch to Wayne Lukas, and now your horse is in the Derby even though Baffert trained it the entire time. I’d guess Churchill Downs is trying to avoid that so the horse would need to be switched before the final prep race so that it can earn enough points to get in.

But i don’t know. Just guessing based on the fact that the consequence of allowing retroactive assignment of the points would make them look like a complete joke.

I really hope all of the owners keep their horses with Baffert. I’d love to see someone prominent skip the Derby and I think it would be great to see some track come up with a huge purse 9f race to compete against the Derby. Or see the Derby winner get trashed in the Preakness by a Baffert horse. His horses can run at Pimlico right?

No. They're GWTW.

You may not have seen the Derby winner, but you probably saw the Queen's Plate winner..

Do you also root for the empire when you watch Star Wars?

So who is getting these points now?

Points are “vacated”, so I assume that means no one gets them. I was wrong.

Seems crazy to me that owners have their horses with Baffert still then. You'd think even he would have some sense and advise them to move them until this is settled.

I would like to see :"look at me" posts automatically deleted, but we can't all get what we want.

Does it? If Messier or any other horse is legit, they can switch trainers and just run him in the final round of preps. If the horse finishes top 2, it’ll probably have enough points to start in the Kentucky Derby.

I think we’ll see them switch trainers if the Churchill ban is not overturned. Maybe Churchill should have prevented any horse that runs for Baffert in 2022 from running in the Derby. But I think they would have had a tougher fight if they did that.

I don’t know enough about all of this but I do think wealthy horse owners continuing to send their horses to Baffert and trainers like him despite his record of violations and deaths will ultimately usher in the downfall of the entire sport. You can’t sit up there and talk about how much you care about the horses while knowingly sending your horses to trainers like him. And once a large enough portion of the public believes that owners are full of crap when they say they care about the horses, it’s basically over.

My thinking is it's already February. The horses are going to have 1, maybe 2 more preps at most. I don't think this will all get settled by March, which would really leave his horses with one prep to earn points.

What if they have an off day? Stumble out of the gate, etc?

They're really putting all of their eggs in one basket and his owners don't spend all that money to not run in the Derby.

I agree with you. If I were them, I’d switch trainers now but I also would have never sent the horse to Baffert to begin with and I probably have a more conservative approach than these owners have.

The hilarious part of this post is that Bob Baffert doesn't need a CDI ban to skip the Derby with a prominent horse.

He does so just about every year: Nadal, Charlatan, Life is Good, Vindication, Kafwain, Officer, Mastery, Hoppertunity, McKinzie, etc.

Furthermore, when he does show up at Pimlico with a prominent non-Derby starter, he usually gets his head handed to him...Bayern, Concert Tour, Collected, Thousand Words, Govenor Charlie, etc.