by Joe Drape
This was as good a place as any for the McKathan brothers to put their name on the gate of a farm and training center and they did just that in 1988. They worked the horse sales and backside of racetracks to solicit clients. They leaned heavily on the friends their father had made in the horse business. Like Luke McKathan, there was nothing they could not do with a horse. They prepped them for sales, getting them fit and buffed up. They rehabilitated injured racehorses, transforming their shedrow into a hospital. They got yearlings ready for the racetrack, putting first a saddle, then the weight of a rider on them, giving them the first taste of their new career on a five-eighths-of-a-mile training track. The breaking and training of horses kept the place afloat, but the real money was in the pinhooking and bloodstock agent work. It was what vaulted you into the circle of deep-pocketed owners who could afford to roll the dice on six-figure-plus horses. Before you landed a real big money owner, however, first you had to find someone as hungry as yourself.
In the early 1990s, the McKathans found their soul mate in a California-based trainer named Bob Baffert, who was trying to transition from the quarter horses to the Thoroughbreds like their father had decades ago. Baffert sported pressed jeans, snap-button shirts, and a cowboy hat that sat atop a full head of snow-white hair. He was in his late thirties, not much older than the McKathans, and traveled with not exactly an entourage, but a good-time crew of small-time (by Thoroughbred standards) owners. He didn’t have any rich patrons, either—or at least not yet. His main client, Mike Pegram, was a former college-bookie-turned-McDonald’s-franchise mogul. It was Pegram, after a spontaneous trip to Las Vegas, who had persuaded him to graduate from quarter horses to the more lucrative Thoroughbred circuit. Such sage advice should be heeded from a man you just watched sign a voucher for $50,000 from a croupier, as Pegram had, especially when come morning you would be sharing a Jacuzzi with him and two young women with your cowboy hat and boots on as Baffert did. In the McKathans, Baffert recognized hands-on horsemen whom he appreciated for their youth and hustle. They had met in Lexington, Kentucky, at the Keeneland September Sale after J.B. became irritated that Baffert had outbid them on nearly every horse the brothers had tried to buy.
“If you just leave, I’ll upgrade your ticket to first class,” said J.B. McKathan.
“I’m already flying first class, buddy,” Baffert said.
It was the beginning of a warm and lucrative friendship. Baffert sent them his babies to break. He already knew they had a similar eye for horses as he did, putting a premium on the way it moved and looked rather than fixating on a horse’s pedigree or flaws. The McKathans were his forward guard. He sent them to sales to weed out the unaffordable or not-good-enough and relied on the half-dozen or so horses they put on a list for him that fit his taste and budget. Baffert and the McKathans had done pretty well together, but all were still looking for their breakout horse.
In April of 1996, Baffert was at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, preparing a gelding named Cavonnier for the Kentucky Derby. It was Baffert’s first starter in America’s greatest race, and he was anxious because Cavonnier had just won the Santa Anita Derby and definitely had a shot to capture the blanket of roses. He was hardly an overnight success. It had taken him twelve lean years as a quarter horse trainer to surpass $1 million in earnings. In fact, he almost quit at one point after his father, Bill, took a horse away from him to train himself. Since switching over to Thoroughbreds, his barn climbed steadily up the national trainer standings. The nearly $3 million his stable earned the previous year was solid, but he had yet to achieve national prominence as a top-tier trainer. Being at the Derby for the first time with a contender like Cavonnier helped, but he needed to keep coming back.
So he was looking to buy a horse for a client at the Ocala two-year-old-in-training sale, one that would return him to the hallowed ground beneath Churchill’s twin spires. J.B. McKathan had one in mind, a gray son of Silver Buck. McKathan had watched him work a quarter mile before the sale and was impressed. His front legs were turned out a bit, but at $80,000 the colt was within Baffert’s price range. He sent a video of the colt to the trainer in Louisville, but one, two, three days went by without a word. When he finally got to it, Baffert told the McKathans to buy the gray colt privately and then promised them a $5,000 fee. They ran into a problem almost immediately. Baffert’s client did not want the horse. J.B. and Baffert thought about keeping the horse themselves, but neither of them felt financially secure enough to take that kind of risk. The trainer, however, had one big spending owner in his barn, Bob Lewis, who owned one of the nation’s largest Budweiser distributorships.
There were two problems, though. Baffert was Lewis’s second-string trainer and lately he hadn’t been winning any races for the owner. D. Wayne Lukas got to spend the big money for Lewis and his wife Beverly’s stable. The owner had already put Baffert on notice with the two phrases that precede a van arriving at the stable to spirit a horse to a rival trainer: “You are winning for other people but not me. We’ve had no luck together.” A phone call was about to change all that. Baffert picked up the phone and told Lewis that he was stuck with what he believed was a pretty nice horse. His name was Silver Charm. Would Lewis be willing to buy him for $85,000? When Silver Charm ran off with the Derby and Preakness before getting caught at the wire by a head in the Belmont Stakes, it looked like a bargain. By the time Silver Charm was retired, he had won the Eclipse Award, the sport’s year-end honor, as the 1997 Champion Three-Year-Old Colt, and eleven stakes—including one of the richest, the Dubai World Cup. He had banked $6,944,369. It would be a while before someone would take away a horse from Baffert or turn his back on the McKathans, especially when the following year the $17,000 screw-and-wire job Real Quiet, another of their joint ventures, came within a nostril of winning the Belmont Stakes and sweeping the Triple Crown.
Over the years, the McKathans helped pick out three other champions for Baffert and his clients, including the Mike Pegram–owned Silverbulletday and sprinter Midnight Lute and the Stonerside Stable filly Chilukki. Dozens of stakes runners, among them thirty Grade 1 winners, had taken their first steps on the racetrack beneath the sun in Central Florida at their farm.
Neither J.B., now forty-nine, nor Kevin, forty-seven, had seen a horse as talented as the one that they were about to unveil on a steamy March morning. This son of Pioneerof the Nile had given both the brothers goose bumps ever since arriving from Saratoga along with more than a dozen other horses from Zayat Stables. They had worked with a number of the sire’s young horses in all shapes and sizes but had recognized they all shared a common trait: desire. They all wanted to win whether playing out in the field or carrying a rider around the training track. When the brothers first got a look at the big, rugged bay colt, J.B. turned to Kevin and asked, “How did this guy get through the ring without anyone buying him?”
With 125 horses on their farm, it was easy for one brown one to blur into another even for the most astute professional horseman. Inevitably, however, a handful of horses make an impression simply by the way they carry themselves, especially in the early weeks and months when not much is asked of them. Teaching a horse to race is a painstaking step-by-step process. They must learn how to accept a bridle or a saddle and girth. They are skittish, anxious, or just plain slow to figure out what to do. The Pioneerof the Nile colt was another story altogether. When they put the tack on him, the big bay stood upright like a medieval knight awaiting his armor from his valet. When he walked the shedrow, he high stepped and looked as if he was ready to bolt out the door and sail clear into the fields. The first time a rider “belly upped” or lay on his back to give him the sensation of weight, he looked bored. With a rider on his back for the first time, he responded to his cues like he had done it all before.
“His mind was just so far advanced than anything I had ever seen,” said Kevin McKathan. “It was like he was in a hurry to learn his lessons. It was clear early he was the best horse on the farm.”
The first time the McKathans let the colt sample what an open gallop felt like, it was at once breathtaking and terrifying. He burst into a stride that skipped over the ground like a hovercraft. He went way too fast and way too far. When the rider finally pulled him up, J.B. McKathan told him, “If you let that horse run again, I’m going to break your arm.”
Soon, the McKathan brothers realized that it was no one’s fault that this long, tall, powerful colt possessed something horsemen dream about and can no way teach: speed, freaky speed. In fact, the first time the brothers put him on the track and asked the rider to push a button or two, he just ran off from the other horses. He had so much natural ability that the brothers did everything in their power not to tax the colt. He was still growing, still getting fit, and they were afraid he would get hurt. None of his riders were allowed to use a whip on him. J.B. changed bits—the small piece of equipment put in a horse’s mouth to help a rider communicate with him—repeatedly looking for a safe and effective way to slow him down.
“It was speed! Speed! Speed! Speed!” said Kevin McKathan. “He had plenty of it.”
On the morning of March 23, 2014, it was time for the McKathans to let some folks, namely Ahmed Zayat and some of his trainers, see exactly how fast this colt was. They were staging a breeze show for Zayat Stable two-year-olds, an annual rite of spring, where the owner could size up his next group of contenders and place them with the trainer and circuit that best fit their talents. Zayat ran his horses everywhere—from Florida to New York and from Kentucky to California. Even post-bankruptcy, he had a lot of them. Mr. Z was a slow-payer, and sometimes a no-payer, and farms and small businesses like the McKathans paid for it. The horse business is tough, and the McKathans always were hustling to make ends meet. Still, everyone doing business with him agreed on three things: “He plays the game hard,” said Kevin McKathan. “He buys good horses to give himself every opportunity. It’s fun to be a part of.”
The McKathans could not have asked for a more perfect setting to premier a magical horse. The pine oaks that canopied their farm had trapped the mist low to the ground and transformed the farm into an enchanted stage worthy of the wizard Merlin. The sun dappled the horses and training track with beams of light as birds sang noisily. The McKathans treated events like these as an open house—the farm was manicured to postcard-quality perfection, and the horses looked like they were ready for a model’s runway. As soon as they started, timed workouts would put all of the brothers’ horsemanship skills on display. Spirits were high among the contingent on the clockers’ stand. The Kentucky-based trainer Dale Romans and his partner Tammy Fox were there, as was the Delaware-based Anthony Dutrow. All were giving Justin Zayat the third degree about dating. Justin was a junior at New York University and easing his way into the stable as its racing manager.
There were a couple dozen people on the clockers’ stand, the small gazebo-style house with a wraparound porch on the rail near the center of the track. The stock of Zayat Stables did not disappoint as one well-bred horse after another took its turn blazing either a quarter or three-eighths of a mile around the track. There were colts and fillies from Eskendereya and Zensational and Maimonides and Pioneerof the Nile, each bounding around the track more impressive than the last one. The McKathans were saving the best for last, though: The Pioneerof the Nile colt out of Littleprincessemma was going to send people home with something to think about. There was no bigger fan of the colt on the farm than Chris Alexander, the brothers’ farm manager. He told anyone who would listen that this unraced two-year-old was the best horse he had ever been around in his life. He decided to put Susan Montanye on the colt’s back for the breeze, despite the fact that she had never been on him. She was lighter than his regular riders, and even though the colt was hard to handle, Alexander believed he would relax under her light touch.
On the clockers’ stand, racetrackers have a talent for carrying on multiple raucous conversations while clicking a stopwatch but still meticulously following the flight of the horse around the racetrack. It’s a hand-eye-mouth coordination necessary to make four hours on your feet each day clocking hundreds of horses seem like a breakfast meeting rather than hard labor. There was no pause in conversation or lowering of their voice when Montanye galloped the colt by the stand the first time. He had his neck bowed and head hanging low and rocked back and forth in a lullaby rhythm, looking every bit like a child’s rocking horse. Montanye let him lift his head a bit heading into the turn, and the power was apparent immediately. He was barrel-chested and sturdy, almost like one of those horses from an old Hollywood Western that thundered toward the sunset and certain glory. It got awful quiet, however, when she shook her reins ever so slightly, backed into a crouch, and just took off like a drag-racing car.
“J.B., tell me the time, please,” asked Mr. Z.
“Eleven and three,” J.B. McKathan replied, confirming the colt was moving fast, 11.60 seconds for the first eighth of a mile.
“Holy shit!” Mr. Z said.
“That’ll do,” offered someone else reverently.
No one spoke as the colt hugged the rail and then rolled around the turn in perfect synchronicity—smooth, effortless without a single wasted motion.
“Twenty-two-point-one,” called out J.B.
By then, nobody needed a time to understand what they were watching—a fast, beautifully put together machine.
“Holy shit!” Mr. Z repeated.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” said J.B. “Thirty-six and three.”
“Holy shit,” said Mr. Z.
“I’m scared of this horse,” said J.B. “Figure out who you want to send him to and get him out of here.”
Montanye came by the stand and smiled when she saw every gaze fixed on her mount. Every one of their jaws dropped. She had just sat on the colt. She had not asked him to do anything.
“That was him,” she said.
J.B. McKathan wanted to put a fine point on what they had all just witnessed.
“He can fucking go, man,” he said. “You just don’t see horses work like that.”
“Dale, I want that one,” said Tammy Fox.
“Who’s getting him?” someone asked.
“It has to be a trainer in attendance,” said Romans to laughter. “You can’t send him to Baffert. He didn’t show up.”
Everyone knew that was exactly where he was going, though.
“What’s his name?” someone else asked.
“American Pharoah,” said Justin Zayat.
CHAPTER FIVE
A LONG SUMMER
August 9, 2014
Bob Baffert’s hair was still snowy white and his eyes still watered beneath his ever-present shades. It is a hell of a thing that a horse trainer is allergic to horses. At sixty-one, the cowboy hat and western shirts were long gone and had been replaced by crisply starched button-downs and fleece vests during the morning training hours and tailored blazers for the clubhouse on big race days. His mouth now moved faster than his legs. Then again, it always had.
It was August at Del Mar, which was the equivalent of saying it was Happy Hour in Heaven. The seaside track that Bing Crosby founded north of San Diego, “where the turf meets the surf,” as only he could croon, was in full swing; this meant the grandstand and clubhouse were filled with good-looking people—many of them young, all of them decked out, some slightly buzzed, but all here to drink in one of the finest places to watch horses run fast. If Saratoga was where horse lovers went to worship, Del Mar was the place they came to throw a beach party. It was the premier meet of California racing, and Baffert had summered here for nearly fifteen years. It was where he raised the curtain and debuted his most promising two-year-olds, especially the colts that he was counting on to get him to the Kentucky Derby. He had won the Del Mar Futurity, the track’s biggest race for two-year-olds, eleven times in the past eighteen years. Some went on to become future Classic winners like Silver Charm (1996) and Lookin At Lucky (2010 Preakness
); others like Flame Thrower (2000) and Icecoldbeeratreds (2002) were never heard from again. There was nothing “been there, done that” about how Baffert approached the fourth race on the card this afternoon, a six-furlong sprint for maidens, or horses that had yet to win, worth $75,000.
He was excited about the bay colt named American Pharoah that had just ambled into the paddock. The colt was a flawless specimen, except for a short, thinning, ratty tail. He arrived in Baffert’s barn that way and the only explanation offered was that one of his equine buddies must have chewed it off at the McKathans’ farm. It didn’t matter. This was going to be his Del Mar Futurity winner and, he hoped, so much more. Still, Baffert was trying not to get too excited. He understood better than most how fragile these Thoroughbreds were and how unforgiving horse racing could be. Silver Charm, Real Quiet, and War Emblem in 2002 all had pulled into Belmont Park with a chance to sweep the Triple Crown and make history. Silver Charm got caught by a head, Real Quiet a nose, and War Emblem stumbled out of the gate and lost all chance. In 2001, the most talented horse he had ever trained, Point Given, saw his bid for history end before it ever began. At a height of 17 hands and a weight of 1,285 pounds, the colt was a beast and dwarfed his rivals, going off as the odds-on favorite to win the 2001 Derby. Instead, he bumped into a horse coming out of the starting gate, forcing his jockey, Gary Stevens, to chase a wicked fast pace from far outside and finished a devastating fifth behind the closer Monarchos in the second fastest time in Derby history. Only Secretariat’s was faster. Point Given went on to win the Preakness, Belmont, Haskell, and Travers Stakes—four consecutive Grade 1, $1 million races—before a strained tendon was discovered in his left foreleg and he was retired. The colt won nine of thirteen starts and accumulated $3,968,500 in prize money. He was named Horse of the Year, but Baffert knew that Point Given would never be considered a truly great racehorse because of his Derby loss.