Kentucky Derby leads off Triple Crown without Bob Baffert

The Kentucky Derby leads off the first Triple Crown season in decades without the chance of Bob Baffert officially winning one or more of the three races.

Baffert’s absence while suspended shadows over the race, particularly because two horses he trained for a significant period of time are among the top contenders. Former assistant Tim Yakteen would get the credit if Taiba or Messier wins after taking over training duties.

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“It’s a talking point, but it’s not a distraction other than that,” retired jockey Jerry Bailey said. “To me, the only thing that’s going to be different is the record books.”

Taiba could become the first horse since 1883 to win the Derby with two or fewer previous starts. Baffert-trained Justify won it on the way to sweeping the Triple Crown in 2018 after racing just three times before the first Saturday in May.

“Times have changed in that regard,” NBC Sports analyst Randy Moss said. “Horses run much less often now leading into the Kentucky Derby in general, so it was just a matter of time.”

This is Bailey’s 34th Derby and Moss’ 41st, with many of them on the NBC Sports set and around the Churchill Downs barns and track together for more than a decade. They tend to agree more often than not, with the notable exception of 2014 when they disagreed about the ride jockey Victor Espinoza gave California Chrome in losing the Belmont with the chance to end the sport’s lengthy Triple Crown drought.

Asked if there was a potential Triple Crown winner in this crop of 3-year-olds, Moss said it was impossible to say and pointed to plenty of near-misses over the years. Bailey thinks lightly raced Taiba