Contact: Alicia Hughes, NTRA Communications, 859-422-2663, ahughes@ntra.com
There was a point during his 3-year-old season where it seemed no matter how hard Authentic ran, he couldn’t escape the shadow that engulfed him each time he hit the track.
Even as he got his 2020 campaign off to a victorious start, the names ‘Nadal’ and ‘Charlatan’ were often mentioned ahead of his when discussing the top sophomore runners trainer Bob Baffert had in his arsenal. When his stablemates had their Triple Crown aspirations dashed due to injury, the son of Into Mischief still found himself in the chair of second fiddle among his classmates as Sackatoga Stable’s Tiz the Law rattled off one Grade 1 triumph after another – including statement-making victories in the Belmont and Travers Stakes.
Once the dust finally settled on a racing season that was one giant exercise in patience and perspective, the luminosity of Authentic’s achievements could no longer be obscured. After repeatedly stealing focus while on racing’s biggest stages, Authentic is poised to claim the sport’s most illustrious year-end honor as a finalist for 2020 Horse of the Year.
In addition to vying with fellow top-level winners Monomoy Girl and Improbable for Horse of the Year accolades at the 50th Eclipse Awards ceremony set to be televised on Jan. 28, Authentic is also favored to claim champion 3-year-old male honors following a season that saw him topple the best of his division in the Haskell Stakes and Kentucky Derby before running all comers off their feet in the Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland on Nov. 7.
The fight for respect Authentic engaged in during much of his career was through no fault of his own. Never worse than second in his eight career starts, the bay colt signaled what was to come during his seasonal bow last January when he captured the Grade 3 Sham Stakes by 7 ¾ lengths in frontrunning fashion. When he stretched out to 1 1/16-miles for the first time in Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes last March, he again flaunted a wicked high cruising speed while dispatching a field that included champion Storm the Court and well-regarded Honor A. P.
“The raw talent he showed us early in his career, that’s the thing about the great ones,” Baffert said of Authentic after the colt retired to stud duties at Spendthrift Farm two days after the Breeders’ Cup. “That raw talent, they expose it immediately and it was my job to funnel it in and make him great. He has this raw speed and athleticism. And he’s one of these horses where he never had a bad day. Never got sick, never had anything. Never had an issue.
“He just couldn’t wait to go out to train. He enjoyed his work. He wanted to run fast every day.”
Getting Authentic’s quick mind to catch up with his swift strides indeed proved the main challenge for Baffert’s team.
After finishing second to Honor A. P. in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby last June, Authentic notched the first top-level win of his career when he captured the Haskell Stakes at Monmouth Park just over a month later. Even that triumph, however, was viewed with skeptical eyes by those who deemed his nose margin of victory that day as evidence that his stamina had reached its limit.
Baffert, to the contrary, insisted that what pundits saw during that Haskell stretch drive was a still-learning, curious horse who lost his focus – not his wind. When that theory was put to the test in the Sept. 5 Kentucky Derby, Authentic backed up his trainer’s sentiments when he captured the 10-furlong classic by 1 ¼-lengths over heavily favored Tiz the Law.
“He was a joy to train but….you couldn’t let your guard down because he spotted everything,” Baffert said. “The whole thing was training him to stay focused. I could tell every time I shipped him, he got better. He got settled.”
The shine Authentic gained from his Kentucky Derby triumph was slightly blunted less than a month later when he was beaten a neck by top filly Swiss Skydiver in a thrilling edition of the Preakness Stakes. He needed to have all pieces of his game come together in order to prevail over a salty field of older rivals in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Sure enough, the most complete version of Authentic is the one the emerged from post nine in the Classic field as he hit the wire 2 ¼ lengths in front of stablemate Improbable while covering the 1 ¼-miles distance in a track-record time of 1:59.60.
Bred in Kentucky by Peter Blum Thoroughbreds and owned by Spendthrift Farm, My RaceHorse Stable, Madaket Stables, and Starlight Racing, Authentic retired with six wins from eight starts and $7,201,200 in earnings.
“In May, I had all these horses. We’d go to Oaklawn with Charlatan. We’ve got Nadal. They looked like unbeatable,” Baffert said. “We had this guy (Authentic), and we didn’t know how good he was.
“We sealed the deal (in the Breeders’ Cup). (The Kentucky Derby) wasn’t a fluke. He’s the best horse in America. That’s why I love horse racing. It’s settled on the racetrack.”