Louisville, Ky.

Bob Baffert, the trainer who was persona non grata at
Churchill Downs for more than three years, shook hands with company boss Bill
Carstanjen just after the $3.2 million colt named for his assistant scored the
narrowest of victories Wednesday in his debut.

The perfunctory part of this story is that Barnes, who cost
Amr Zedan $3.2 million at a sale 15 months ago, looked ever so green trying to
figure out how he was supposed to respond to jockey Martín García’s urging down
the long homestretch.

Click here for Churchill Downs entries and results.

Making up ground in the middle of the track, the highly
prized, 2-year-old son of Into Mischief finally reeled in rail-running Innovator
by a head to win one of the most anticipated $120,000 maiden races in anyone’s
memory.

“Martín, I asked him, could you feel the weight on your
shoulders coming down the lane with this horse?” Baffert said. “He said, ‘Oh, I
could feel it.’ ”

It was more than just another photo finish in a 5 1/2-furlong maiden race in the gloomy drizzle of a day that felt more like winter than fall. Baffert
made the trip all the way from California for this one. He was just three
hours down the road to spend Thanksgiving with the family of his wife Jill, so
why not?

There also was the symbolism of his being at Churchill Downs
for the first time since Carstanjen lifted his suspension. It was the one
brought on by the positive drug test that turned the late Medina Spirit from
the 2021 Kentucky Derby winner into the centerpiece of a dispute that was
hauled into hearings and courtrooms for most of three years.

To pull out a victory the narrow victory over Innovator,
trained by 89-year-old D. Wayne Lukas, added another layer to the story.
Baffert and Lukas watched the race together.

“I’ll tell you that’s a relief,” Baffert said as he walked
from the paddock through the tunnel to the winner’s circle. “It’s a good day.
It’s a glorious day, so I’m just happy that we’d be back, and everything’s behind
us, and we’ve got a good horse.”

It was not a slam-dunk victory. Breaking from post 3 in the
field of 10, García had to muscle Barnes (1-4) into position on the backstretch
to stalk mostly in second place along the rail. Innovator (7-2), who was making
his fifth start, carried Luís Sáez through brisk early fractions of 21.90 and
44.73 seconds.

Turning for home, Barnes tipped outside. Way outside. He did
not know which lead he was supposed to be on, even as García tried alternating
his crop hand. The whole time Innovator was digging in.

With Barnes racing in his wide path, he made up 1 1/2 lengths
in the final furlong to get the bob of the head in the light of the finish-line
camera. Sinister Smile (37-1) was the best of the rest, finishing another 10
1/2 lengths back in third. The winning time on the fast track was 1:02.97.

A week ago Baffert said he would have wanted Barnes to make
his debut at six furlongs. Now we know why.

“It’s too short,” Baffert said. “I was worried about the 5
1/2. … I think down the road he’s going to be better with distance as he
showed today.”

The usual question about what is next came up. Actually,
Baffert raised it before he was asked. He also shut it down, at least in terms
of specifics.

“We’ve got some other ones that we’ll have to split them up,”
he said, no doubt weighing his deep roster that includes Breeders’ Cup Juvenile
winner Citizen Bull. “It’s just good to bring an horse and have him win.”

Asked early Wednesday afternoon if shipping Barnes meant he
would send him outside his Southern California home base for his Derby preps
next year, Baffert did not rule it out.

“Possibly yes,” he said. “Sometimes I ship a lot of my
horses. I have such a great team that we really work with these horses a lot,
so they’ve been moved around. They’ve been in trailers. When I (ship) them from
Florida after they’ve been broken, I don’t fly them out. We put them in a van.
I think that really toughens them up.”

Baffert’s team also includes his 26-year assistant Jimmy
Barnes, who ironically was not at Churchill Downs to watch his namesake’s
debut. He was back in California tending to the rest of the stable. Trainer
Rodolphe Brisset looked after the four-legged Barnes since Friday.

The colt still was just an unfilled blank until last
month. That was before Baffert got a look a list of newly available names recently
released by The Jockey Club.

“I saw Barney,” he said. “But that sounds like a gelding,
right? We can’t call him Barney. And Amr said, ‘You know what? How about Jimmy?
Let’s name one Barnes.’ I said that’d be great. We didn’t tell him. I waited
for the name to come through (the approval process), and I said look at the
name of that horse. Jimmy was so taken. He was just honored by it.”

The way Baffert let Barnes know of the naming seemed a bit
like a gender-reveal party.

“I ordered a halter with the name Barnes on it,” Baffert
said. “When he showed up, I said here’s the halter. Go put it on the horse. He
looked at it and said, ‘Oh, my God.’”

The handshake with Carstanjen after the race took about a second. It was kind but brief. Nothing like the experience of Baffert and
Lukas standing together in the paddock watching the big screen and wondering
which of their horses got his head down at the wire.

“Congratulations,” Lukas said when the results were posted.

“All right, my man,” Baffert said. “It was like Grindstone
and Cavonnier.”

That was the 1996 Kentucky Derby, where they finished in that order, and Lukas
got the nod in the photo.

There was one more bit of symbolism after the race. After Churchill
Downs TV analyst Kaitlin Free interviews Baffert for the track feed and the small
crowd that came to the track, the Bachman-Turner Overdrive song “You Ain’t Seen
Nothing Yet” was played.

“I have great memories of Churchill Downs,” said Baffert,
who hopes to add a seventh one in the Derby next May. Finding out whether it is Barnes, Citizen Bull or none of the above is more than a long winter away.