Justify shows effortless talent in winning Kentucky Derby

It’s not just that Justify, the undefeated champion of the 144th Kentucky Derby on Saturday, wins races, it’s how he wins them that has stamped him as a potential super horse and the next great hope for horse racing.

Justify, under Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, was just off the lead out of the gate and never looked back, all but ignoring the rain and sloppy track while roaring down the stretch to win the as the favorite at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky.

Justify became the first horse to win the Derby without being raced as a 2-year-old since Apollo in 1882. He’s now won all four of his career starts, all over the past 15 weeks, the latest victory a tour de force as he thrived near or at the front of the 20-horse field as they splashed their way around the 1 1/4 miles.

It would not be a stretch to say that Justify, the chestnut son of Scat Daddy out of the Ghostzapper mare Stage Magic, left the rest of the talented field in the preeminent race of the year for 3-year-olds flailing in the mud.

He went off as 5-2 top choice and became the sixth straight post-time favorite to win the Derby. Justify earned $1,432,000 for the victory and rewarded his pari-mutuel backers with $7.80 on a $2 bet to win, $6 to place and $4.40 to show.

Good Magic (at 9-1 odds) battled Justify down the length of the stretch before fading. He finished second by 2 1/2 lengths, just nosing out the late-charging Audible (at 7-1) to earn his runner-up placing.

Good Magic paid $9.20 to place and $6.60 to show, while Audible paid $5.80 to show.

Eighty-five-to-one longshot Instilled Regard was fourth, putting a charge into the superfecta payout of $19,618.20.

Justify is co-owned by Kentucky’s WinStar Farms, Head of Plains Partners and the China Horse Club. WinStar, which won its first Derby when Super Saver romped in the slop in 2010, owns the majority of the horse.

Justify’s trainer, Hall of Famer Bob Baffert, has now won the Kentucky Derby five times.

“When he got away clean, I thought we had a chance,” Baffert said after the race on NBC’s broadcast. “Mike took his time — we knew it was going to be a hot pace. I saw the splits and how fast they were, but he was doing it easy.”

After the race Baffert was quick to place his lightly raced but uber-talented colt in some lofty company, comparing Justify to two other-worldly horses he has trained — 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah, and Arrogate, who won the 2016 Travers Stakes, the 2016 Breeders’ Cup Classic, the 2017 Pegasus World Cup and the 2017 Dubai World Cup.

“Him and American Pharoah and Arrogate, they’re just cut from a different (cloth),” Baffert said. “It took a great horse to do what he did today. I rank him up there with my top ones. This track really had me worried.”

This group of horses, especially the top 10 in the field, was considered the strongest for the Derby in a quarter-century, but none of them came close to responding when Justify moved to the front on the far turn and pulled away under only a few swats of the whip from Smith as horse and rider hugged the rail, which was considered the fastest part of the muddy racetrack.

It was Smith’s second Derby victory, his other one coming in 2005 aboard the 50-1 longshot Giacomo.

“It took a horse like Justify to break the 136-year-old Curse of Apollo,” Smith said as he was being interviewed on the track immediately after the race. “My vocabulary can’t describe how special this horse is.

“He is really talented and fast, and he has a mind to go with it — he was just loving (the conditions and the crowd). For such a young horse, he is just so big and talented.”

Justify ran the third-fastest first half-mile in Kentucky Derby history and still had enough to finish strongly, aspects that have racing insiders claiming that his best races are yet to come. His winning time was a pedestrian 2:04.2, which was most likely a product of the conditions rather than Justify’s overall talent.

The rest of the field finished, in order: My Boy Jack (6-1), Bravazo (66-1), Hofburg (27-1), Lone Sailor (24-1), Vino Rosso (14-1), Solomini (62-1), Firenze Fire (59-1), Bolt D’oro (8-1), Flameaway (37-1), Enticed (50-1), Promises Fulfilled (49-1), Free Drop Billy (45-1), Noble Indy (59-1), Combatant (70-1), previously undefeated Magnum Moon (13-1) and Mendelssohn (6-1), the highly regarded European invader who never really got into the race.

Justify will move on to try to capture the second leg of the Triple Crown in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore on May 19.

It remains uncertain which horses will line up to try to keep him from that second jewel. Chad Brown, the trainer of Good Magic, said after the race that he would not take his horse to the Preakness. Todd Pletcher, the trainer of Audible, usually sits out the Preakness if he does not have the winner of the Kentucky Derby, preparing to work his horses up to the Belmont Stakes in New York, the third jewel of the Triple Crown.

Despite the soggy conditions, the total attendance of 157,813 for the 14-race card marked the eighth-largest crowd in the race’s history. More than three inches of rain fell at Churchill Downs on Saturday, making it the wettest Run for the Roses in history.

–Field Level Media