41 Facts About Bob Baffert

Robert A Baffert was born on January 13,1953 and is an American racehorse trainer.

Bob Baffert has trained two Triple Crown winners: American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018.

Bob Baffert holds the trainer record for Preakness Stakes with eight wins and has won the Belmont Stakes and Kentucky Oaks three times each.

Bob Baffert is a four-time winner of the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Trainer.

Bob Baffert has been the subject of significant controversy regarding repeated incidents of his horses failing drug tests.

Bob Baffert graduated from the University of Arizona's Race Track Industry Program with a Bachelor of Science degree, got married, and began training quarter horses at a Prescott, Arizona farm.

Bob Baffert got his first big break in 1992 when he won his first Breeder's Cup race with Thirty Slews.

Bob Baffert established his early reputation with less expensive horses like Silver Charm and Real Quiet, bought for $16,500 and $17,000 respectively.

Bob Baffert revisited the Derby the next year, sending two top colts, Real Quiet and Indian Charlie, to Louisville.

Real Quiet won the race that year, and Bob Baffert finished third with Indian Charlie.

Bob Baffert became the first trainer in history to win the Derby and Preakness in back-to-back years.

Bob Baffert did not win another classic race until 2001, when he won the Preakness and Belmont Stakes with eventual Hall of Fame member Point Given.

Bob Baffert finished third in the Derby that year with Congaree.

Bob Baffert won the Derby a third time in 2002 with War Emblem.

Bob Baffert did not have a horse hit the board again in any of the Triple Crown races until 2009, when he trained Pioneerof The Nile to a second-place finish in the Derby.

Bob Baffert trained Lookin At Lucky, co-owned by Mike Pegram, to win the Preakness Stakes in 2010.

In 2012, Bob Baffert saddled Bodemeister, named for the trainer's youngest son, Bode, to second-place finishes in the Derby and Preakness.

Bob Baffert saddled Paynter in the Belmont Stakes later that year, but that colt, like his stablemate Bodemeister, finished second.

In 2015, Bob Baffert trained the 2014 champion two-year-old colt American Pharoah to win the Triple Crown, the first to do so in 37 years.

In winning the 141st Kentucky Derby, bringing his total number of victories in the race to four; Bob Baffert ran the third-place finisher, the previously undefeated colt Dortmund.

American Pharoah next won the 140th Preakness Stakes, making six victories in that race for Bob Baffert, who finished fourth with Dortmund.

Bob Baffert trained the 2018 Triple Crown Winner, Justify and the 2020 Kentucky Derby winner, Authentic.

Medina Spirit's drug violation led to several racetracks suspending Bob Baffert from entering races, including a ban of over three years by tracks owned by Churchill Downs.

Bob Baffert was inducted into Lone Star Park's Hall of Fame in 2007, and in 2009, he was nominated and inducted to the National Museum of Racing's Hall of Fame, the same year as a filly he trained, Silverbulletday.

Bob Baffert has trained horses that won seventeen American Classic Races, nineteen Breeders' Cup races, four Dubai World Cups and three Pegasus World Cups.

Bob Baffert's graded stakes wins include nine wins in the Santa Anita Derby, nine in the Haskell Invitational Handicap, ten in the Hollywood Gold Cup Stakes, and eighteen in the Del Mar Futurity, a race he won seven straight times from 1996 to 2002, when it was a Grade II event.

Bob Baffert won the race in 2008,2009,2011,2012,2014,2016,2018,2021,2022,2023, and 2024 when run as a Grade I event.

Bob Baffert has won the Kentucky Oaks three times: first in 1999 with Silverbulletday, who was later selected for the Hall of Fame, then with Plum Pretty in 2011 and with Abel Tasman in 2017.

Bob Baffert has been a subject of controversy due to multiple horses in his stables having failed drug tests.

Bob Baffert came under intense scrutiny in 2013 after seven horses in his stables at Hollywood Park died between November 2,2011, and March 14,2013, all from sudden and later unexplained heart attacks.

California's equine medical director found that Bob Baffert's horses were routinely given Thyro-L, or thyroxine, a thyroid hormone, that could cause heart problems during exercise, but concluded the medication, which Bob Baffert said he had been using routinely for the previous five years, did not cause the heart attacks.

Bob Baffert responded by saying the situation "was like a cancel culture kind of a thing," a remark which earned him criticism from the press.

On May 17,2021, the New York Racing Association banned Bob Baffert from entering Medina Spirit or any of his other horses in the 2021 Belmont Stakes or any other race at Belmont Park.

On June 14,2021, Bob Baffert sued the NYRA alleging the association had no authority to suspend his license and that suspension "without prior notice" was a violation of the law.

In February 2022, Bob Baffert was suspended 90 days and fined $7,500 by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission.

One year later, in July 2024, Churchill Downs rescinded the ban after Bob Baffert issued a statement accepting responsibility for Medina Spirit's drug positive and for any substance found in the horses that he trained.

Bob Baffert has been married twice and has five children: four with his first wife, Sherry.

Bob Baffert married his second wife, Jill, a former television reporter based in Louisville, in 2002.

Bob Baffert survived a heart attack in late March 2012 while in Dubai conditioning Game On Dude to compete in the Dubai World Cup.

Bob Baffert had been paid $200,000 to allow the Burger King to stand behind him in the grandstand during the televised broadcast of the Belmont, after having turned down $150,000 to allow the mascot to appear with him at the Preakness.

At the post-Belmont press conference, Baffert announced he and his wife would be making donations of $50,000 each to the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, the California Retirement Management Account, and Old Friends Equine, all programs for retired race horses; and to the Permanently Disabled Jockey's Fund in memory of a Quarter Horse Jockey named Robert Z "Bobby" Adair.