ARCADIA — Despite everything, the western road to the Triple Crown series still runs still goes through Bob Baffert’s stable.
Sunday at Santa Anita, it didn’t matter that his best young horse had been scratched from $300,000 San Felipe Stakes and that his two remaining horses in the race are officially not Kentucky Derby material.
Baffert-trained Imagination and Baffert-trained Wine Me Up ran first and second after a bumpy clubhouse turn before Imagination and jockey Frankie Dettori won a stretch battle by a head in the 1 1/16-mile San Felipe.
Mc Vay finished 6 3/4 lengths back in third, and it was another 31 lengths to Scatify in the race reduced to four horses when Baffert announced the scratch of top-ranked North American 3-year-old Nysos the day before.
For Baffert, the only concerning moments came as the field entered the first turn, when Scatify shifted off the rail and knocked Imagination “sideways,” as the Equibase chart footnotes put it.
“The one horse came (out) on Imagination, it scared him, and he took off with (Dettori),” Baffert said in the winner’s circle.
Said Dettori: “My horse, and I took him back to get him wide to get him to relax and get him back into the race. He fought a great duel. He was full of heart.”
A stewards’ inquiry into the first-turn drama resulted in no change.
For the horses vying for Kentucky Derby qualifying points, John Shirreffs-trained Mc Vay picked up 15 for finishing third and John Sadler-trained Scatify 10 for finishing fourth. Mc Vay now has 19 for the season, placing him in a tie for 17th in the scramble for 20 starting spots in the May 4 Derby. Scatify has 16, which puts him 21st.
If either continues on the Derby trail, he’ll need a good run in the April 6 Santa Anita Derby or another of the major preps(worth 100, 50, 25, 15 and 10 points to top-five finishers. It usually takes 40 or more points to get into the Derby.
On a surface rated fast — but dulled by the rain that forced this card to be postponed from Saturday to Sunday — Imagination covered the 1 1/16 miles in 1:44.55, making this the slowest San Felipe since Soul of the Matter’s 1:44.68 won on a muddy track in 1994.
Most of that slowness happened in the homestretch as Imagination, on the outside, and Wine Me Up, on the inside with jockey Juan Hernandez, soldiered on against the effects of their early struggles or the tiring footing or both.
It became the first of three graded stakes wins for Baffert on Sunday — he won the Santa Anita Handicap with Newgate and the Frank E. Kilroe Mile with Du Jour within the next 65 minutes — as well as his ninth San Felipe victory.
And it made Imagination (who paid $3.80) the fourth Baffert horse to win a stakes race in this 3-year-old season, joining Nysos, Muth and Wynstock.
But none is eligible for the May 4 Kentucky Derby because of Churchill Downs’ continuing ban of Baffert stemming from Medina Spirit’s disqualification from his 2021 Derby victory for a medication violation.
Instead, Baffert’s best will jump into the Triple Crown in the May 18 Preakness.
Imagination, a son of Into Mischief who sold for $1.05 million as a yearling to co-owners SF Racing, Starlight Racing and Madaket Stables, is a colt on the rise after winning his stakes debut in his fifth start. Wine Me Up, by Vino Rosso and owned by Mike Pegram and partners, ran well toio and narrowly missed his first stakes win in five tries.
Baffert called Imagination a “slow developer.”
“We’re trying to develop these horses,” Baffert said, “so it was good for both of them.”