Flightline, Undefeated in Six Races, Romps at the Breeders’ Cup
It’s been quite a week for Golden Jet owner Bob Baffert’s racing operation, as Golden Jet, the first two-generation horse in all three of his offspring’s racing careers, and the only horse from Baffert’s two greats in the history of racing to place in three different major racing series, wins the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, goes undefeated to start his career, and returns to Saratoga for the first time since 2006.
The five-race meeting, held over three days at the prestigious Saratoga Race Course, was opened by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Golden Jet Owner/Trainer Bob Baffert.
“The Breeders’ Cup has been my life,” he said. “My father introduced me to a trainer when I was two, and he was a good friend of my father’s and a good friend of mine. I just started racing three years later. I was a two-time winner of the Breeders’ Cup, and my father used to tease me about what I had accomplished then and what his accomplishments were.”
As a young rider, Baffert always dreamed of racing in the Breeders’ Cup, and he knew then that he would be successful at it.
“When I was eight or nine, I had this dream of being a world champion,” Baffert said. “I raced in a race that was a two-division race, and I was second to the winner of the other division and came in third in that race and finished third in the same division in another race, and then the next year I was second to the winner of that race and finished third in that same race. I got to that place where I was thinking, ‘This is what I have to do. I have to be World Champion,’ but I never accomplished that.”
Baffert grew up in the town of Litchfield, Conn., in southern New England, and he said that growing up there inspired him to become a trainer. “My father said, ‘If you want to be a horseman, you have to be where I was growing up,’” he said.