HIT SPRINGS -- Bob Baffert has no equal in racing for draining the suspense from a million-dollar horse race.
Let Adare Manor's front-running victory Saturday in the $1.25 million Apple Blossom Handicap at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort serve as Exhibit A.
They could have rolled the credits at the head of the stretch, if not on the first turn. Uncle Mo's daughter could have picked a number for the final mile-and-sixteenth time, her 1:42.88 not close to the unofficial 1:40 20 track record by Heatherten in the 1984 Apple Blossom but fast enough to swamp her opponents on this day.
By 5 1/2 lengths under 123 pounds, Michael Lund Petersen's 5-year-old mare gave her Hall of Fame trainer a second sweep of the track's two Grade I events. Juan Hernandez, the newly crowned Santa Anita riding champion, rode Adare Manor two weeks after guiding Muth to a two-length win in the Arkansas Derby.
As with American Pharoah and other Baffert-trained stars, Jimmy Barnes, wearing his familiar dark glasses, was on hand for the saddling and pictures afterward as he served as trainer.
Peterson's Baffert-trained filly Gamine was disqualified from a 2020 Oaklawn victory, only to see the Arkansas Racing Commission overturned a stewards' ruling the next spring. Also upheld that day was stablemate Charlatan's first-division Arkansas Derby victory, Baffert doubling up with Nadal.
Whether Baffert ever races again at Churchill Downs, where he is ruled off for the third straight year over a drug flap dating to the 2021 Kentucky Derby, is anyone's guess. The 71-year-old trainer remains not only welcome at Oaklawn but ever hard to beat.
Second on Friday's card with Grazia, another passenger on a flight from California, Baffert posted his second Apple Blossom victory. Plum Pretty figured in a 2012 Oaklawn Grade I parlay with his first of a record-tying five Arkansas Derby winners, Bodemeister, later second in the Kentucky Derby.
Adare Manor came east after making her reputation in California with a Grade I victory (2023 Clement L. Hirsch at Del Mar) and three Grade II wins. Her last-out second March 9 in the Grade I Beholder Mile at Santa Anita blotted memories of a lackluster Breeders' Cup Distaff, won in November by future champion Idiomatic. Trainer Brad Cox has yet to bring back that three-time Grade I winner.
Adare Manor was good enough to deny Cox-trained Wet Paint (sixth of nine) a fourth Oaklawn stakes victory in her 4-year-old debut. Another coming up short, after a six-furlong win over the track, was Pimlico Grade II winner Taxed (fifth) for trainer Randy Morse.
Second- and third-place finishers Flying Connection (26-1) and Free Like a Bird (58-1) sweetened the exotics after Adare Manor produced skimpy win-place-show returns of $3.40, $3 and $2.60.
Flying Connection returned $13.60 and $7.80 to place, while Free Like a Girl paid $9.40 to show.