American Pharoah dominates in final race of historic career

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- It was about 60 minutes after the final 2 minutes of American's Pharoah's now legendary career. Bob Baffert was lingering in the Keeneland Sales Pavilion where billions of dollars have changed hands through the decades in an often desperate attempt to get the forever horse.
"He is the horse we all thought he was,'' the great trainer said behind the auxiliary press box and just steps from the auction ring where so many have tried for so long without success to buy a horse just like American Pharoah.

Horse racing has lingered on the sporting periphery for decades now, a wonderful study in the human condition to those who understand it, an artifact from another time for the rest. It was always going to take a horse so dominant and appealing that he cut through the noise and demanded attention. American Pharoah, finally, was that horse and horse racing, a game with so many unintended consequences, finally had its happy ending.

"He put on a show and he came back like it was nothing," Baffert said.

The trainer was the human voice behind the horse, but this was really about the voices of fans that jammed Belmont Park on the first Saturday of June, overwhelmed Saratoga on the last weekend of August and the 50,155 that came to pay tribute at Keeneland on Saturday as the Triple Crown winner tried to become the first horse to win the Breeders' Cup Classic after having already taken down the game's Holy Grail.

I will never forget being at a press conference after the Dream Team had won the Gold Medal in Barcelona. Larry Bird said he had one regret -- that there wasn't more competition. If there was a regret about this Classic, it was exactly that -- no competition.

The great mare Beholder had to be scratched on Thursday because of a fever. The only other horse with any speed, Smooth Roller, was scratched by the track veterinarians the morning of the race. Liam's Map, who trainer Todd Pletcher wanted to run in the Classic, was instead detoured to Friday's Dirt Mile, perhaps because Lane's End Farm where he will stand at stud already had Honor Code for the Classic.

It was a strong field with accomplished horses that included the winners of prestigious races like the 2014 Belmont Stakes, the 2015 Metropolitan Mile, Wood Memorial and Whitney in the gate with Pharoah, but all of them had the wrong running style. Liam's Map, with his early speed, and Beholder, with her rare talent, would have provided much more competition.

It may not have mattered anyway. Pharoah was that good in his finale, cruising to the front with his perfect stride, going the first quarter mile in 23.99 seconds, followed by quarters of :23.51, 23.71, 24.26 and, finally, 24.60 for the final quarter as jockey Victor Espinoza really asked him to run through the wire, knowing this was it so there was no reason to save anything, the colt's next duties at his future home at Ashford Stud just down Versailles Pike from Keeneland requiring a different kind of energy.

American Pharoah ran the Classic American distance of a mile and a quarter, the Kentucky Derby distance, in 2:00.07. That computed to a Beyer speed figure of 120, rare air in the 21st Century for a throwback horse who finishes his career with $8,675,300 in earnings and a special place in the sport's history.

Pharoah will now be measured against that history. The bottom line is that regardless of the competition, the horse can only run against those in the race. American Pharoah was the horse durable enough to make all the races, running at nine different tracks and winning at all of them except Saratoga, the track where Secretariat got beat in the second race after his 1973 Triple Crown just like Pharoah.

''The fanfare got him the day before,'' Baffert said of the Travers. ''He went way too fast in his gallop the day before.''

With 15,000 in the grandstand just to watch that gallop, Pharoah thought it was a race and took off, leaving him with too little energy the next day. And he almost won anyway.

Baffert's good friend Wayne Lukas, 6 weeks removed from laying in a hospital bed at Aria Health in the Northeast after a scary heart issue at the Pennsylvania Derby, was so excited by what he had seen in the Classic that he invaded the press conference to take the microphone and congratulate Baffert.

Later, Lukas walked up on the dais and Baffert told him ''I got him ready like I was getting him ready for the Champion of Champions, that's all I did.''

That is a major quarter horse race where both trainers got their starts. Now, they have won a combined 32 Breeders' Cup races, 20 for D. Wayne, 12 for Baffert.

''I'd say he ranks with Secretariat and Spectacular Bid,'' Lukas said of Pharoah.

''Secretariat, he raised the bar,'' Baffert said.

Really, Secretariat is not a fair reference point for any horse. All these years later, the horse still holds the time records for the Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes.

American Pharoah will be crashing top 10 lists and he should. This campaign, which almost never began because an injury that kept out of last year's Breeders' Cup, started with his training in Southern California, wandered through Arkansas, Kentucky, Maryland, New York New Jersey. New York again and finally, Kentucky again, never once racing where he trained in California, road trips from start to finish. They missed Pennsylvania, but the Pa. Derby was on Baffert's agenda. And the colt would not have lost there.

''I would like to have gone to Parx,'' Baffert told me after talking to Lukas.

They went to Saratoga instead and got the horse beat, but nobody will remember that. They will remember the feeling in Saratoga Springs that weekend, they will remember the first Triple Crown in 37 years and they will remember the ending.

It was circumstance that beat Pharoah in the Travers. How fluky was it? Keen Ice, the horse that beat Pharoah, ran against him four other times, including the Classic. He lost by a combined 32 lengths.
''This race was only about American Pharoah,'' his owner Ahmed Zayat said. ''We want him to go out as a winner.''

There was $5,644,981 in the win pool, $2,735,997 on American Pharoah.

The margin was 6 1/2 lengths, 1 length more than the Belmont Stakes, but the sounds and sights were the same, everybody awed by the grace and the power all in one perfect equine package that included, Baffert said ''mechanics that are totally different than any horse I've ever had.''

''I was standing in the paddock watching the race (on a big screen),'' Baffert said. ''I wish I would have watched him in the front to hear the crowd. I didn't get to see the crowd, but I was enjoying that moment with my wife, Jill, and we were just emotional for us, the journey with this horse that we've been on.''

The racing journey ended on Halloween not long before darkness descended on the track where horse racing has always mattered.

As he left the Sales Pavilion, Baffert wondered aloud where he and his family should go next.
''Let's go to the barn,'' Baffert said, wanting to spend just a little more time with the horse he an everybody else had been waiting for.

It would have been nice to see Pharoah run in 2016, but, given his value as a stallion, that wasn't realistic. In fact, he could have been gone after the Triple Crown.

''We can't be afraid to run these horses,'' Baffert said.

And they were not, three more times after the Belmont, with a grand finale in Central Kentucky, the very center of the horse racing universe, the right place for the right horse at the right time.

FAVORITE TALE'S TALE

Parx-trained and Philly owned Favorite Tale beat 11 of the best sprinters in America Saturday. The only two he could not beat, Runhappy and Private Zone, are the two fastest horses in the country. Lupe Preciado did a wonderful job training his horse up to the biggest race of his life. Owner Paul Conaway and Preciado mapped out a plan last year to get their horse to this race.

It all went perfectly until the horse got caught up in the Parx quarantine at the beginning of October, had to relocate to a private farm where he could be isolated and then move on the Delaware Park for a workout and then, finally, took a long van ride to Kentucky when the van naturally broke down for hours.
Imagine what Favorite Tale might have done if the last month had been anything close to normal. He finished third, 1 3/4 lengths behind Runhappy in 1:08.58 for 6 furlongs. All three horses beat the old track record.

PORTER HAS AMERICA'S BEST 2-YEAR-OLD

Wilmington's Rick Porter has owned Horse of the Year Havre de Grace and two Derby runner-ups, Hard Spun (2007) and Eight Belles (2008). His brilliant unbeaten 2-year-old filly Songbird did a pretty good American Pharoah imitation when she blew away the field in the Juvenile Fillies. She ran the mile and a sixteenth in 1:42.73, 1.06 seconds than the colt Nyquist took in winning the race for 2-year-old males. Could she try for the 2016 Derby? Time will tell.