In a Hall of Fame career that's still going strong, Bob Baffert has seen some of the sport's brightest stars come into his California barn.
He, better than the vast majority of trainers, knows about the inherent qualities that separate good racehorses from the great ones.
So when Baffert tosses around a term such as "brilliant," his trusted friend and longtime client Mike Pegram knows what to do.
"You start paying attention," Pegram said.
For the past few months, Pegram has been paying close attention to his 3-year-old colt Uncle Chuck after hearing Baffert praise the son of Uncle Mo .
"He has great athleticism," Baffert said about Uncle Chuck, "and he has his sire's brilliance."
For Pegram, that kind of talk was more than enough for him and his ownership group partners, Karl Watson and Paul Weitman—"the Car Guys," as Baffert calls them—to mull some cross-country plans that came to fruition this week when Uncle Chuck arrived at Saratoga Race Course for an Aug. 8 date with destiny.
Among a field of eight in the $1 million Runhappy Travers Stakes (G1) is the division's leading 3-year-old and Belmont Stakes Presented by NYRA Bets (G1) winner, Tiz the Law , as well as Uncle Chuck, who would be considered an upstart if not for his renowned connections.
Though Uncle Chuck is undefeated, he has only raced twice and his career has spanned a little less than two months. He's a stakes winner, but that came in the Los Alamitos Derby (G3) against only three rivals, and he has faced as many rivals in his entire career as he will on Saturday.
It's not the kind of résumé you would generally associate with the 5-2 second choice in a race as prestigious as the Travers, but Pegram knows the deal rather well.
In 2016, Baffert shipped Arrogate from California to New York off just four starts, none of them in stakes, and took on the winners of all three Triple Crown races in the Travers. Arrogate not only won, he smashed the track record in winning by more than 13 lengths.
The next year, Baffert sent West Coast to the Travers and he beat two classic winners in giving the Hall of Fame trainer his third and most recent victory in the 1 1/4-mile Midsummer Derby at the Spa.
"Bobby doesn't run many short horses. That's why he's the king," Pegram said. "He knows how to train a horse and he can size up a race as good as anyone. He was thinking ahead when he brought (jockey Luis Saez) out to the West Coast to ride Uncle Chuck in the Los Al race and give him some experience on the horse before the Travers."
While there is still much to learn about Uncle Chuck's talent level, his four-length victory in the Los Alamitos Derby took on some added glow when the horse who finished second, stablemate Thousand Words , beat leading Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1) prospect Honor A. P. in the Aug. 1 Shared Belief Stakes at Del Mar.
"I know Bobby's very high on the horse, but until you take the horse east, you don't know what you have. We're going to find out Saturday," Pegram said.
The race will indeed be revealing. While there are similarities with some of Baffert's past Travers winners, a case could be made that West Coast and Arrogate faced horses who were worn down by their exploits in the Triple Crown. Meanwhile, in Tiz the Law, Uncle Chuck will be facing a rival who has started just three times this year due to a revised Triple Crown schedule and is remarkably fresh, even after being in training since January.
Given all that, Baffert is quite understanding of the challenge facing his colt and what can go right or wrong in the 10-furlong test.
"He's never run against horses like these before. We'll see where he fits and go from there. We'll see if he's a Kentucky Derby-type horse. I think he's going to like the distance, but you just don't know until they do it," Baffert said. "West Coast and Arrogate had more races in them. Getting another race in him would have been ideal, and it also would have been ideal if the Travers was a mile and an eighth like the Belmont Stakes, but we'll see what happens. If he runs well, we'll go to the Kentucky Derby. If he doesn't, we can always go to the Preakness (G1). We'll take it one race at a time."
While Uncle Chuck lacks enough qualifying points to start in the Sept. 5 Run for the Roses—he's 22nd with 20 points—it's somewhat of a moot point. With 100-40-20-10 points up for grabs to the top four finishers in the Travers, if he exits the race without enough points to crack the top 20, it would have to be viewed as a sign that his connections overreached in the 151st Midsummer Derby.
Yet it's that "brilliance" in his racing and training that paints the decision as a wise move at the moment.
"He's still learning, but he looks the part. He has that big, long stride. Each time he won, in the gallop out it looked like he was just starting to get going. We're very hopeful, but I've been in this game long enough to know that the higher you get, the further you fall, so we're trying to keep a lid on things," Pegram said. "If he doesn't win the Travers, it's not the end of the world, but we know he belongs. When you fly a horse across the country, you want to make sure he belongs, and he belongs."
One powerful sign that Uncle Chuck belongs was offered by Baffert in discussing Uncle Chuck's recent training at Del Mar.
"He worked the same way as Authentic and Improbable worked over a deep track here," Baffert said. "He did it the right way."
For the record, after training at Del Mar, both Authentic and Improbable shipped east for top-level stakes, with Authentic taking the TVG.com Haskell Stakes (G1) at Monmouth Park and Improbable winning last weekend's Whitney Stakes (G1) at the Spa.
Seeing good things in Uncle Chuck started with Baffert's first glimpse of the dark bay colt from the Summerfield consignment at the 2018 Keeneland September Yearling Sale.
"He was a tall, lanky horse. Rangy-looking. He didn't look like an Uncle Mo, but he caught my eye," Baffert said. "His pedigree is ridiculous."
Bred in Kentucky by Stonestreet out of the Unbridled's Song mare Forest Music, Uncle Chuck hails from a highly successful sire of two-turn graded stakes winners in Uncle Mo, who was an amazingly quick 2-year-old champion. His dam was a grade 2-winning sprinter who had already made a name for herself as a broodmare, delivering grade 3 winners Electric Forest and Kentuckian, as well as the promising stallion Maclean's Music .
Baffert conferred with his bloodstock adviser, Donato Lanni, and decided to bid. It took only $250,000 to buy the colt for the group that signs its tickets as Three Amigos.
"We expected to pay more," Baffert said, "but once we got him, I knew I would have to take my time with him. I didn't want to run him at 2. He needed time to grow up."
In the winter of his 3-year-old season, Uncle Chuck began to live up to Baffert's expectations. While stabled with assistant trainer Mike Marlow at Los Alamitos, he attracted comparisons with some of the barn's best-known runners.
"Mike told me he's a serious horse. He said that about Justify and American Pharoah , too. He's a pretty good judge of talent, so when he said that, I told him to get that guy over to me now," Baffert said.
Uncle Chuck made his belated career debut June 12 at Santa Anita Park in a mile maiden race and produced a frontrunning seven-length win that set in motion Baffert's thoughts of a race like the Travers for owners who are dear to his heart.
"They are a fun group. They have been with me forever, and Mike is like a brother to me," the two-time Triple Crown winner said. "It's nice to have a good horse with them, and we feel Uncle Chuck is a good horse."
Baffert and his buddy Pegram came within inches of sweeping the Triple Crown in 1998 with Real Quiet. In the course of a little more than 20 years, they won major stakes with Silverbulletday and Captain Steve, among others.
For the Three Amigos of Pegram, Watson, and Weitman, Baffert trained classic winner Lookin At Lucky, $4.7 million earner Hoppertunity , and multiple grade 1 winner McKinzie , who won the Whitney Stakes last year.
Whether that dose of recent history at the Spa will be repeated with Uncle Chuck will be determined Saturday in an environment that will be much less festive. There will be no fans, just a small collection of owners in attendance, yet it promises to offer just as much excitement as last year—for at least part of the day.
"Anytime you can go to New York and win, you're walking on air when you're leaving," Pegram said. "Just having a horse good enough to ship to Saratoga is exciting, though I'd rather feel excited going home."
