by Jeff Lowe

Among trainers in the chase for the Triple Crown, Rick Dutrow Jr. is still the clear leader in the category of brash confidence, but Reade Baker is making a race of it.

Baker is extremely high on Kentucky Bear leading up to Saturday's Preakness Stakes (G1), just as he was five weeks ago when the Mr. Greeley colt finished a strong third in the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes (G1) in his third career start.

Kentucky Bear was 50-to-1 on the morning line for the Blue Grass; he went off at 27.80-to-1 and finished well ahead of graded stakes winners Visionaire, Cool Coal Man, Pyro, and Big Truck.

Baker sent the chestnut colt on to Churchill Downs, eager to run him in the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (G1) but knowing he would have only a remote chance to qualify with just $75,000 in graded stakes earnings.

Baker was right—Kentucky Bear was among four exclusions when the Derby drew more than the maximum of 20 runners.

Big Brown's dominant victory in the Derby did little to diminish Baker's zeal.

“Big Brown beat a lot of horses in the Derby, but he didn’t beat us,” Baker said on Wednesday, when Kentucky Bear was pegged at 15-to-1 on the morning line for the Preakness.

Like Dutrow’s unabashed faith in Big Brown, Baker's confidence derives from a sense that Kentucky Bear is uniquely talented. Baker said he probably has never trained a horse with more raw, pure ability.

The only comparison he can make from his personal experience in more than four decades in racing is to Kentucky Bear's broodmare sire, 1987 Canadian Horse of the Year Afleet.
 
"I haven't been around one like this since Afleet, and I wasn't the trainer, I was the racing manager [for owner-breeder Richard Kennedy]," Baker said. "Just raw brilliance."

Baker opened a public stable in 1990 as Kennedy began to reduce his operation. He has overseen some talented horses in notching 62 stakes wins, mostly at Woodbine. He was the 2005 Sovereign Award winner as Canada's outstanding trainer.

Baker, 61, knew he had something special in Kentucky Bear when the colt ignited to a 6 1/2-length victory in a one-mile maiden race on January 21 at Gulfstream Park.

"I've never seen a horse more impressive than that [first-time out], let alone to train him," Baker said. "I've been on the racetrack since 1965."

The debut emboldened Baker and owner Danny Dion to jump Kentucky Bear into the Fountain of Youth Stakes (G2) for his second start on February 24 at Gulfstream. He was well supported at the windows, departing as the 4.10-to-1 third choice under jockey Joe Bravo, but they encountered trouble on the first turn and never recovered in finishing seventh behind Cool Coal Man.

"It is a complete toss," Baker said. "He grabbed himself, got jostled badly in the first turn—the jock drove right into a mess—and he bled. Those three things can stop a horse. Those three things can stop a horse. I think we could have been tougher in the Blue Grass. I think [jockey Jamie Theriot] waited too long."

Kentucky Bear rallied extremely wide—the chart says nine wide—coming out of the far turn and finished 1 1/2 lengths behind Monba and Cowboy Cal, the stablemates who were separated by a neck at the wire in the Blue Grass.

He registered two bullet workouts—one at Churchill and one at Keeneland—before moving over to Baltimore on May 8. He breezed five furlongs over a sloppy track at Pimlico Race Course on May 10.

Baker follows the Ragozin Sheets and knows Kentucky Bear would have to improve dramatically from the 6 he earned in the Blue Grass to duplicate the stellar figure—a negative-three-quarter—that Big Brown received for the Derby.

"But can we get down to a 3 or a 2 and have Big Brown come up to us?," Baker said. "Sure, why not?"

Jeff Lowe is a Thoroughbred Times staff writer