Authentic earned an automatic starting spot in the Gr1 Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic with victory in Saturday’s Haskell Stakes (9f) for 3yos at Monmouth Park.
Away smartly and quickly settling on the lead under Mike Smith, Authentic (pic: Monmouth Park/ Ryan Denver/EQUI-PHOTO) was allowed an uncontested lead and held a clear advantage at the final turn. NY Traffic (Cross Traffic) raced in second all the way and closed late but fell a nose short, the pair 4-1/2 lengths clear of Dr Post (Quality Road).
Smith told the Monmouth Park website Authentic is still learning to race.
He’s a colt with an abundance of talent. Ability is something he does not lack. He’s got a lot of it,” Smith said.
“But what he is lacking right now, he’s learning. He’s growing up. He sees things. Down the backside if you get a chance to look at the head on there are a lot of shadows back there from the sun at this point.
“He looked at every single one of them and he wouldn’t let me get him down close to the fence because he was looking at them too much.
“Then he kicked away like I wanted him to heading for home. Once that horse started to come at him, I wanted to get into him a little bit just to get him going.
“If he was going to start playing again I thought `I just better stay riding and hope he could hang on at that point’ – which he did. I rode him well past the wire just to show him to keep running. I didn’t want to think it was over when he hit the wire.”
Speaking from his from his home in Southern California, Baffert said he felt the son of Into Mischief was ‘just playing’
“I’m just so proud of him, but I was like everybody else telling Mike ‘You better stay after him. You’d better keep busy.’ He (Authentic) looks at everything, as we’ve seen in his past races – I could tell he wasn’t focused going down the stretch but he held on. He saw that horse coming to him and he took off again.
“Jimmy (assistant trainer Barnes) said he came back not really that tired. We had to ship. We’re learning about the horse. He might need a little blinker, though.
“He was playing in the stretch; I could tell he wasn’t laying it down. He was just playing out there and that horse came to him and kept him going. But when he got (out on an easy lead) by himself like that I thought for sure he was just going to go on. But he ran a great race.”