All eyes are on horse trainer Bob Baffert ahead of the Breeders' Cup
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The Breeders' Cup Classic is Saturday at Lexington's Keeneland Race Course, with a 10-horse field battling it out for the season-ending, $6 million purse.
Driving the news: All eyes will be on legendary trainer Bob Baffert, whose decades of unprecedented success have been peppered with numerous doping violations, including four in the last six months alone.
Details: The Breeders' Cup World Championships are a two-day, 14-race event with $31 million in prizes. The main event is the last of those 14 races.
- Post time: 5:18pm ET (NBC)
- Field: Improbable (5-2) is the betting favorite. Full field.
The big picture: Baffert is by far the most decorated trainer in the sport's history. His horses have won six Kentucky Derbies, seven Preakness Stakes, three Belmont Stakes and three Kentucky Oaks. He's also trained the past two Triple Crown winners — American Pharoah (2015) and Justify (2018).
- He's avoided serious penalties for doping violations — a small fine here, a brief suspension there — but one's reputation can only withstand so many nicks.
- On Wednesday, he pledged to run "a tighter ship" moving forward. "Horses have been my life and I owe everything to them and the tremendous sport in which I have been so fortunate to be involved," he said.
The bottom line: Three of the 10 horses in tomorrow's race were trained by Baffert — odds look pretty good to claim another big win.
