Bob Baffert: Preakness Stakes 2025 Trainer Profile

Key Takeaways:

• Throughout the years, Bob Baffert has amassed 8 Preakness wins and has his sights set on a 9th in 2025 with Goal Oriented, who has two wins but no stakes experience.
• Only he and one other trainer have won the Triple Crown twice; for Baffert, it was with American Pharoah (2015) and Justify (2018).
• 2025 also marked Baffert’s return to the Kentucky Derby after a three-year suspension, but his horse—Citizen Bull—did not place.

Though he started in the world of quarter horse racing, Baffert is now one of the most recognizable figures in the world of Thoroughbred racing. He won his first Thoroughbred race in 1979: a $600 maiden special weight race at Rillito with an Arizona-bred named Flipper Star. Since then, the stakes have steadily risen. He has won almost 3,500 Thoroughbred races in the 36 years since, including 17 Triple Crown races and 18 Breeders’ Cup races, for a total of over $355 million in purse earnings. He has been awarded the Eclipse Award for outstanding trainer four times, most recently in 2015, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2009.

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Triple Crown Record

Bob Baffert is the only active trainer to have won the Triple Crown: and he has not only done it once, but twice. He trained American Pharoah to victories in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes in 2015, becoming the first trainer to win a Triple Crown since Affirmed completed the feat in 1978. American Pharoah also became the only horse to date to win a Triple Crown and a Breeders’ Cup Classic when he concluded his career with a triumph against older foes at Keeneland.

Just three years later, Bob Baffert added a second Triple Crown when Justify swept to victory. Justify not only became the second of Bob Baffert’s Triple Crown winners, but he also became the first horse since Apollo in 1882 to win the Kentucky Derby without racing as a two-year-old. Justify is still only the third horse who didn’t race at two to win the Kentucky Derby, as Mage also did it in 2023.

Kentucky Derby

After a three-year period of ineligibility, Bob Baffert returned to the Kentucky Derby in 2025. Though reigning juvenile champion Citizen Bull could not extend his trainer’s list of wins in Churchill Downs’ signature race—he finished 15th in the field of 19—Baffert still has an impressive record of success in the Derby.

Kentucky Derby Winners

Baffert has started 35 horses in the Kentucky Derby between 1996 and 2025. He almost won the Kentucky Derby the very first time he showed up, with Cavonnier getting nosed out by late-running Grindstone.

However, he got his first win the very next year, and has won the race six times in all. Only two of his six Kentucky Derby winners have been betting favorites, though both of those horses went on to sweep the Triple Crown.

Bob Baffert’s Kentucky Derby winners include:

Medina Spirit crossed the wire first in 2021, but was eventually disqualified due to a positive test after the race. That precipitated a long legal battle and a suspension that ended up lasting three years. Baffert was allowed to start running again at Churchill Downs in the fall of 2024. He won with his first starter back at the track: Barnes, who won a maiden special weight there on November 27, 2024.

Preakness Stakes

Baffert has run 25 horses in the Preakness Stakes between 1996 and 2024. Though his record in the first leg of the Triple Crown is strong, he has an even better record in the middle jewel at Pimlico Race Course. His eight Preakness victories are the most of any trainer in history, and mean he has won the Preakness with just under a quarter of the horses he has started in the race.

Four of Baffert’s Preakness winners have been favorites, but all eight of them have been well bet. The $8.20 bounty on Silver Charm is the most lucrative win payout of any Preakness Stakes winner from his barn. In short, if you are looking to bet a Bob Baffert horse in the Preakness, at the very least, make sure the bettors are high on him.

These are Bob Baffert’s Preakness Stakes winners:

Belmont Stakes

Compared to the other races in the Triple Crown, Bob Baffert has sent out the fewest by far in the Belmont Stakes. He has only sent 13 starters to the Test of the Champion between 1996 and 2024, half as many as he has run in the Preakness Stakes. He also has the fewest winners in the Belmont Stakes, with three of his starters making it to the winners’ circle. All three of those winners, however, were heavy betting favorites: all three were the winning horse in the Preakness three weeks before, and two of the three clinched Triple Crowns on Belmont Park’s premier race day.

These are Bob Baffert’s Belmont Stakes winners:

Baffert in the 2025 Preakness Stakes

The 2025 Preakness Stakes happens at Pimlico Race Course on Saturday, May 17. Baffert was originally going to enter a pair in the race: Rodriguez, who was scratched from the Kentucky Derby due to a foot bruise; and Goal Oriented, who won an allowance on the Kentucky Derby undercard. However, Rodriguez did not recover from his foot bruise quickly enough to give Baffert time to get him ready for the race. So, Baffert only entered one runner in Pimlico’s signature race.

He has two other horses entered during the Preakness festival, though neither are in stakes company. He trains Privman, a three-year-old Justify colt, in a maiden special weight on Black-Eyed Susan day, Friday of Preakness weekend. On Saturday’s card, in addition to Goal Oriented in the Preakness, Baffert also runs Varney, a sophomore colt by Vekoma, in another maiden special weight.

Goal Oriented

In the nine-horse field for the Preakness, Goal Oriented is the only runner without any stakes experience.

A son of Not This Time out of the multiple graded-stakes winning turf mare Bizzy Caroline, Goal Oriented only had his first race on April 6, a six-furlong dirt sprint at Santa Anita. Well off the early pace, he made a wide rally around the turn, sustained it in the lane, and cleared off in the final furlong to win by 3 ¼ lengths.

That maiden win earned him a ticket to Churchill Downs for Kentucky Derby weekend, but he didn’t face stakes company there. He was sent off as the favorite in a 1 1/16-mile allowance on Kentucky Derby day, his first two-turn try. Unlike his previous start, he was forward from the outset. Though outjumped to the early lead by a foe, he inherited the lead going into the backstretch, set the pace, and held off the more experienced Hypnus in the final stages.

Of course, the biggest question about Goal Oriented is his lack of experience: his two starts are the fewest of any of the nine horses in the Preakness. He has yet to run in a stakes race, and he has to break from the challenging rail. However, the fact that he overcame a less-than-perfect beginning on debut is a positive, as is the fact that he has the tactical speed that plays so well at Pimlico. He also keeps the riding services of Flavien Prat. Prat rode him in the allowance at Churchill, and no one is riding big races better than he is nowadays.

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