{"id":294962,"date":"2026-05-01T13:44:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/294962\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T13:44:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:44:13","slug":"california-trainers-have-long-shots-in-the-kentucky-derby-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/294962\/","title":{"rendered":"California trainers have long shots in the Kentucky Derby hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

LOUISVILLE, Ky.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0No trainer has won the Kentucky Derby more times than Bob Baffert.<\/a> Among other living trainers, nobody has won the Derby more than Doug O\u2019Neill.<\/p>\n

Combined the two Southern Californians have eight Derby victories \u2014 Baffert (six) and O\u2019Neill (two) \u2014 one more than the total for the other 15 trainers in the field.<\/p>\n

And yet, O\u2019Neill\u2019s horse for Saturday\u2019s race, Pavlovian, is a 30-1 long shot on the morning-line odds, and Baffert\u2019s starters are 20-1 (Potente) and 30-1 (Litmus Test). Not the odds you\u2019d expect to see if you were just looking at the trainers.<\/p>\n

Both know it\u2019s nothing personal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a sign of how, really, the sport is all about the horse,\u201d O\u2019Neill said at his barn. \u201cWhether you\u2019re Bob or me or whoever, you\u2019re only as good as your horse. Bob and I are bringing in some horses that don\u2019t jump off the page number-wise. But I was very impressed with Potente\u2019s work the other day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Potente\u2019s trainer also understands the odds, noting this isn\u2019t the first time he\u2019s brought long shots to the Derby.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, I\u2019d rather be here with a horse like American Pharoah<\/a> or Justify,\u201d<\/a> Baffert said, referring to his Triple Crown winners from 2015 and 2018. \u201cBut then I\u2019d be like Todd [Pletcher]. He\u2019s getting sick. I said, \u2018You\u2019re sick because you\u2019ve got the favorite [Renegade].\u2019 When I had Pharoah and Justify, I got so sick. I was so stressed out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baffert added he was thinking at the time, \u201cIt was a layup; I better win this.\u201d<\/p>\n

If those horses were layups, Potente is more like a three-pointer from Stephen Curry range, while Litmus Test is along the lines of Jerry West\u2019s 60-foot shot in the 1970 NBA Finals.<\/p>\n

Of Baffert\u2019s 35 previous starters, three went off at odds of 55-1 or higher (they finished sixth, 10th and 17th), and three others were priced at 20-1 or higher. Two of those finished ninth (25-1) and 15th (27-1), but War Emblem won the 2002 race at 20-1.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill\u2019s first victory, in 2012, was unexpected; I\u2019ll Have Another was priced at 15-1. Four years later, Nyquist triumphed as the 2-1 favorite. Both horses were owned by J. Paul Reddam, as is Pavlovian. A win Saturday would make the duo just the fourth owner-trainer team to win the Derby at least three times.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s very cool,\u201d O\u2019Neill said, noting that Pavlovian is in the same stall Nyquist occupied a decade ago. \u201cA lot of great memories here.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you know, when you\u2019re talking a 20-horse field, I like the way Paul puts it: When you\u2019re one out of 20, you got a 95% chance of losing, right? So when you get lucky enough to win, and you\u2019re part of that 5%, you pinch yourself to how lucky and how amazing that experience was and hopefully could be again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pavlovian is an unlikely Derby horse, and not just because he\u2019s trying to become only the fifth Cal-bred to win the race. It\u2019s mainly because he raced exclusively against Cal-breds in seven of his first eight races and only won one.<\/p>\n

The last of those races, though, was the Cal Cup Derby, and a strong finish encouraged O\u2019Neill to try the Sunland Park Derby. With Edwin Maldonado riding for the first time, the son of Pavel won, and in the Louisiana Derby he led almost the entire race before Emerging Market passed him in the final strides.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor him to put up a great fight with a top horse like Emerging Market, it was a huge effort,\u201d O\u2019Neill said. \u201cAnd the nice thing there, too, we had extra timing between that race and the Kentucky Derby. Knock on wood, everything\u2019s kind of coming together as we had hoped and prayed.\u201d<\/p>\n

While O\u2019Neill never could have expected to be here with his Cal-bred, Baffert will start two of the myriad expensive colts his clients buy each year. Potente, the San Felipe winner and Santa Anita Derby runner-up, cost $2.4 million, more than double any other horse in the Derby. Litmus Test, the Los Alamitos Futurity winner who has disappointed in two starts this year, was purchased for $875,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re going to have to improve a lot,\u201d Baffert said. \u201cPotente, we\u2019re still trying to figure him out a little bit, what he wants to do, how he wants to run, but he\u2019s a big strong horse. \u2026 He\u2019ll get the mile and a quarter.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd [Litmus Test] was running really well, and then he sort of took a step back on me, but I did ship him a lot, so that might have knocked him out a little bit. But now he looks good. He worked well here, so we\u2019ll see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Second scratch<\/p>\n

Fulleffort was scratched Thursday because of a chipped bone in his left hind ankle. Trainer Brad Cox still has his two most accomplished horses running Saturday in Florida Derby winner Commandment and Blue Grass champion Further Ado.<\/p>\n

The scratch puts the maiden Ocelli in the field in the No. 20 post position. Great White, who moved into the field Wednesday with the scratch of Silent Tactic, will now break from the No. 19 post.<\/p>\n

Kentucky Oaks Day<\/p>\n

The filly equivalent of the Derby, the Kentucky Oaks, will be run under the lights at 5:40 p.m. PDT Friday. Zany (4-1) is the morning-line favorite for trainer Todd Pletcher, but two Southern California horses should be strong contenders: Michael McCarthy\u2019s Meaning (5-1), the Santa Anita Oaks winner, and Baffert\u2019s Explora (6-1). McCarthy also will start Brooklyn Blonde (30-1).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOUISVILLE, Ky.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0No trainer has won the Kentucky Derby more times than Bob Baffert. Among other living trainers, nobody…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[58473,125353,122964,125352,6308,9831,13569,125355,48,52,51,96104,125354,47,50,49,96656,2211,595,125356,72],"class_list":["post-294962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bob-baffert","tag-california-trainer","tag-derby","tag-doug-oneill","tag-field","tag-first-time","tag-horse","tag-kentucky-derby-hunt","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-litmus-test","tag-long-shot","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-potente","tag-race","tag-saturday","tag-scratch","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}