By T. D. Thornton
The bandwagon for Barnes was already pretty crowded heading into Saturday's GII San Vicente S. at Santa Anita. It now may be next to impossible to find a standing-room-only spot after the Bob Baffert-trained son of Into Mischief uncorked a crusher of a performance that left four rivals reeling in his 5 ½-length wake.
I have no idea if the two sprint victories at the root of this $3.2 million FTSAUG colt's foundation will blossom into a blanket of roses on the first Saturday in May. I am pretty certain, though, that Barnes stands a chance at being the most highly hyped GI Kentucky Derby prospect ever.
The benchmark for pre-Derby exuberance-in my lifetime, at least-has always been Arazi, the compact chestnut with the jagged white blaze from France who blasted into contention by obliterating the field in the 1991 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile.
Returning overseas for the winter while out of the American public's view only added to the colt's outsized mystique, and even though it was well-reported that Arazi had undergone arthroscopic surgery in Kentucky to remove bone spurs on both knees four days after the Breeders' Cup, his Derby price dipped to as low as 8-5 at some Las Vegas bookmakers in the era before pari-mutuel futures betting.
After only one prep race in France 25 days before the '92 Derby, Arazi started as the 9-10 favorite on race day. Unwinding with authority from the back of the pack, he ranged up to challenge the leaders off the far turn, then suddenly had nothing left to give. Backpedaling to eighth through the stretch, Arazi weakened behind 16-1 upsetter Lil E. Tee. He won only one more Group 2 race in France later in the year before returning to the States to finish his career 11th as the 3-2 beaten favorite in the GI Breeders' Cup Mile.
Make no mistake, Barnes's talent and untapped potential are there. But what will really stoke his fire of fancy into a full-blown conflagration over the next 120 days is the unavoidable narrative that figures to dominate headlines leading up to the first leg of the Triple Crown on May 3.
The gaming corporation that owns Churchill Downs had barred Baffert in June 2021 because of a string of drug positives in horses Baffert trained, including two in Churchill's most prominent races, the 2020 GI Kentucky Oaks and the 2021 Derby. The colt who tested positive and was disqualified for an overage of betamethasone in that 2021 Derby, Medina Spirit, was owned by Amr Zedan, who has spared no expense in trying to win the Derby in the first year that his main trainer has become re-eligible to compete in it.
Barnes, who is named after the Hall-of-Fame trainer's longtime assistant, Jimmy Barnes, was hand-picked to be Baffert's first starter at Churchill after the corporate ban was lifted earlier this year.
When the colt scored a head victory sprinting 5 ½ furlongs in Louisville on Thanksgiving Eve, his price subsequently plummeted in that weekend's Derby Future Wager.
Even though he had only raced once in a short sprint, the 13-1 odds on Barnes represented the lowest mutuel on any of the 38 individual horses in Pool 2.
And that price could be halved when betting opens for Pool 3 on Jan. 17.
That's a prohibitively low potential return for a prospect who won't have raced two turns prior to locking in those odds, with the Derby itself still some four months away.
Then again, Barnes certainly looks the part of a colt who might relish longer distances based on the assertive way he splintered the San Vicente field, earning a 94 Beyer Speed Figure, up from 87 in his debut.
He menacingly forced the issue through legit quarter-mile splits (:22.65, :22.45 and :24.50), then bounded home solo through the stretch in a :12.55 final furlong (:35.50 for his final three-eighths) for a seven-furlong clocking of 1:22.15.
“He was aggressive down the backside but he's still learning how to run,” jockey Juan Hernandez said after scoring his third consecutive renewal of the San Vicente. “I like him because around the quarter pole he got off the bridle and was kind of looking around a little bit. But when I corrected him, he came back to me. I was really surprised how he finished today.”
Baffert said post-win Saturday that Barnes shares physical resemblances with his maternal grandsire, American Pharoah, whom Baffert trained to Triple Crown stardom in 2015.
Such comparisons, repeated often enough over the next 17 weeks, will only further inflate this colt's can't-miss aura, contributing to even more imbalances in the futures betting.
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