DEL MAR — Welcome to the Bob Baffert Weekend at Del Mar.
The summer meeting annually ends with a pair of seven-furlong, $300,000 Grade I races for 2-year-olds — Saturday’s Debutante for fillies and Sunday’s Futurity.
And no one has had more success in these races than Baffert. The trainer has saddled 10 Debutante winners and 17 Futurity winners. He has swept both races in six different years.
He has the favorites in both races with Juan Hernandez as the jockey on both — leading to another interesting final weekend twist.
Hernandez enters the final two days with 44 wins and holding an insurmountable lead in the jockey standings. Baffert has 21 wins and holds a three-race lead while seeking his first Del Mar trainer title since he tied Phil D’Amato in 2022.
Baffert and Hernandez have a symbiotic relationship this meeting. The pair have combined on 19 wins — 43 percent of Hernandez’s total and all but two of Baffert’s. The trainer has had the winner in 48 percent of the 44 races this summer in which he’s entered at least one horse.
Hernandez will be on Baffert’s Nooni (4-5) in the Debutante and Getaway Car (6-5) in Sunday’s Futurity. Baffert also has the early second and third choices in Gaming (Flavien Prat) and Citizen Bull (Mike Smith) in the Futurity.
Baffert will have a total of five horses in the 2-year-old features. Tenma (Kazushi Kimura) will Nooni in the Debutante. Each race has drawn seven entries.
The biggest threat to Nooni in Saturday’s fourth race appears to be D’Amato’s Vodka With a Twist (Mike Smith). Behind Baffert’s trio in the early Futurity odds is the Tim Yakteen-trained McKinzie Street (Kimura).
There will be two other stakes races on the turf Saturday — the Grade II John Mabee Stakes (a 11/8-mile test for older fillies and mares) and the one-mile Juvenile Fillies Turf.Bodacious wins.
Jockey Tyler Baze had Bodacious on the lead from wire-to-wire to win Friday’s feature — the $100,000 I’m Smokin Stakes, a six-furlong run for Cal-bred two-year-olds. Shea Brennan, the 3-5 favorite, ran third. Trainer Peter Miller pulled morning-line favorite R Heisman out of the race in favor of running in the Futurity.
“He ran a perfect pace,” Baze said of the son of Smokem. “He was the right horse for this race. I’ve been with this horse for six months. I have a lot of faith in him.”
Said trainer Jorge Periban: “When he broke from the gate, he was more focused and I said: ‘This is going to be the time.’ He’s a nice horse and was ready to go.”
Notable
There was a scary moment in Friday’s third race when leader Watershed Moment went through the break-away inside rail on the turf course … actually going through a second time when re-entering the track. Jockey Armando Ayuso wasn’t unseated and an outrider brought an uninjured Watershed Moment under control.
