Bensalem, PA (SportsNetwork.com) – Bayern, the Haskell Invitational champ, set the pace and upset Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner California Chrome in Saturday’s $1 million Pennsylvania Derby at Parx Racing.<\/p>\n
California Chrome, making his first start since the Belmont Stakes on June 7, went off as the 9-10 favorite in the eight-horse field with Bayern the 7-2 second pick.<\/p>\n
Trained by Bob Baffert and ridden by Martin Garcia, Bayern got a great start in the 1 1\/8-mile stakes with California Chrome breaking from the inside post and racing third along the inside.<\/p>\n
Bayern continued to set a moderate pace as California Chrome remained along the rail up the backstretch, a place he’s not comfortable. C J’s Awesome was racing second.<\/p>\n
Bayern opened his lead down the stretch and cruised to a 5 3\/4-length victory leaving California Chrome up the track.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t want to over-ride him today because he had a long break and the first time back,” California Chrome’s jockey Victor Espinoza said. “He’s still good and he will be coming back for the Breeders’ Cup and he’ll be a different horse.”<\/p>\n
Finishing second was West Virginia Derby winner Tapiture with 5-1 third choice Candy Boy third and Noble Moon and C J’s Awesome in a dead heat for fourth. California Chrome was sixth followed by Protonico and Classic Giacnroll.<\/p>\n
Bayern set a new track record for 1 1\/8 miles by stopping the timer at 1:46.96 on a fast track.<\/p>\n
“We’ll just enjoy this race,” Baffert assistant Jim Barnes noted. “Bob and Kaleem (owner Kaleem Shah) will get together and decide where Bayern will start next.”<\/p>\n
Bayern, taking on ‘Chrome’ for the first time, won his second $1 million stakes to go along with his Haskell victory. The $562,000 boosts the colt’s earnings to $1,639,680 with five wins in nine career starts.<\/p>\n
“A lot of kudos to Bob Baffert, Jimmy Barnes and Mike Marlowe, The Baffert team they do an incredible job. Kudos to them,” owner Kaleem Shah said.<\/p>\n
Bayern was coming off a disappointing last in the 10-horse Travers four weeks ago. Prior to the Haskell, the colt won the seven-furlong Woody Stephens Stakes by seven lengths on the Belmont Stakes program.<\/p>\n
Bayern paid $9.00, $3.60 and $4.00. Tapiture returned $5.80 and $4.00, and Candy Boy paid $4.20 to show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bensalem, PA (SportsNetwork.com) – Bayern, the Haskell Invitational champ, set the pace and upset Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner California Chrome in Saturday’s $1 million Pennsylvania Derby at Parx Racing. California Chrome, making his first start since the Belmont Stakes on June 7, went off as the 9-10 favorite in the eight-horse field with Bayern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[330],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23754,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23752\/revisions\/23754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}