Bob Baffert has seen it all: two Triple Crown winners, six Kentucky Derby wins, and a three-year Churchill Downs ban. But right now, his focus is simple. Potente just put in his final breeze ahead of the Derby, and the 73-year-old likes what he saw despite the bookmakers writing them off.

Even then, the pace at which the colt ran five furlongs in his final workout still stunned Baffert.

“Well, I didn’t, I didn’t think he was going that fast,” Baffert said in an interview on X. “I looked down, I go, ‘Ooh, he’s going a little fast.’ You know, but he had a hold of him, you know, the whole way.”

“I worked him with some company and, uh… But, uh, I all of a sudden looked at my watch, and he was just cruising.”

The 17-time winner across Triple Crown races only expected Potente to clock in just under a minute. Instead, the colt blitzed the track and finished with a time of 57.8 seconds. It was the fastest of 23 horses that ran the distance in the morning and, by the end of the workout, the fastest of 120. To put it in perspective, Intrepido, who also ran that morning, finished a half-mile in 45 seconds.

It meant that Potente didn’t just run 220 yards more; he also ran the half-mile faster than Jeff Mullins’ colt. An impressive final tune-up run from the three-year-old, and Baffert was left beaming by the end of it.

“And so, uh, but, um, he’s a horse that he just bounced over this racetrack,” Baffert explained. “You know, some horses that get here, they’re just, you know, struggle or else they bounce over it. But, uh, he got over it.”

He added, “Came back, he was happy. When he turned around, he still had a little bounce in him. So, uh, the time was a little fast, but, uh, he ha- he did it the, you know… He, he did it, like, with effortlessly, which was pretty impressive. So I, I’d say I was pretty impressed with that work.”

It leaves Bob Baffert in a happier mood than when he started, as he was concerned before the workout. That’s because Potente last ran at Santa Anita, which has a comparatively heavy and looser dirt track. Not only that, but Baffert’s star finished second behind So Happy in the Grade 1 race. It wasn’t the worst result in the world, but Baffert was definitely happier after watching the workout.

And why wouldn’t he be? The 73-year-old has two horses running in the 152nd edition of the Kentucky Derby: Potente and Litmus Test. But that’s where the problems arise, as the bookmakers haven’t been kind to Baffert and his horses. Potente will start out 14th from the rail and with 15-1 odds, while Litmus Test (4th from the rail) is a long-shot 30-1.

Not quite what Bob Baffert expected going into yet another Kentucky Derby, chasing after a record-breaking seventh Derby win. He does have seven wins to his name but his 2021 Kentucky Derby win had to be struck after a violation. That led to his suspension from racing at Churchill Downs for three years, before returning last season.

But despite the long odds, Baffert does have two horses in the race, which should give him a chance. That wasn’t always the case, as only a last-minute change to the lineup allowed Litmus Test in.

Bob Baffert reflects on Litmus Test making the cut for the Kentucky Derby

The three-year-old colt was the last horse to get into the field on Saturday after Chip Honcho withdrew from the race. That was after trainer Steve Asmussen and the horse’s owners decided to skip the Kentucky Derby to focus on the Preakness Stakes on May 16. It allowed Litmus Test a chance to make the cut after finishing seventh in the Arkansas Derby earlier this year.

And Bob Baffert was pleased with the result, especially as it doubles his chances for a victory. That’s even if the odds are against him, but Litmus Test ran his workout just as well as Potente. The colt finished five furlongs in 59 seconds on Thursday, just two seconds slower than Potente ran.

“If you would have asked me a few days ago (if he’d enter), I wasn’t sure,” Baffert said, as per Courier Journal. “He likes this surface. That’s very important. Some horses don’t go over it as well as others.”

But despite his impressive run during the workout, the horse enters the Kentucky Derby in poor form. He’s won just twice in the last year, and both wins came when he was still a two-year-old colt. Since the turn of the year, Litmus Test finished third at the Grade 2 Rebel Stakes and seventh at the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby.

Not quite the results Baffert expected, and it’s why he put the blinkers back on, hoping that it helps the horse improve his performance.

“I was really disappointed in his last race, did some adjustments, and he came back and put in a brilliant work here (Thursday) morning,” Baffert added. “Blinkers back on. It’s nice for the group to have a horse in the Derby.”

In the end, despite the long odds and recent setbacks, Potente has given Bob Baffert a reason to be optimistic. And with both horses showing promise in their final workouts, the Derby picture may not be as bad as it first seemed.