LOUISVILLE, Ky. _ It seemed like Bob Baffert had never been to this place.
In the winner's circle, at the podium after a Kentucky Derby victory, as the trainer of the odds-on favorite.
It was hard to tell on Saturday that he had won the Triple Crown with American Pharoah just three short years ago.
Baffert felt unsure, uneasy, uncomfortable.
As the rain kept coming at Churchill Downs on Saturday, the seemingly California calm trainer couldn't believe his weather luck. He couldn't settle down.
"I was not feeling great about it," Baffert said of the rain. "I was leaking really bad. I was not feeling good at all. ... I was preparing my wife for a loss. We were ready to head outside the minute they crossed the wire."
The plan involved sneaking out the back gate if his favored Justify had finished anywhere other than first.
The trainer felt an extra sort of pressure this time with this horse.
Justify was a horse that was so impressive from the beginning that Baffert thought the guy with the clock during workouts surely had the time wrong.
"I knew I had something really special and he had to prove it today," Baffert said. "I was worried about us doing everything right."
He fretted when wife Jill pulled out a beautiful green dress for Saturday's races. Green isn't a lucky color in racing, Baffert thought.
Well, we'll see how good this horse is in spite of her dress, he continued.
He worried about the weather. He worried about everything that week.
"It's like having LeBron James on your team," he said of the NBA star. "If you have LeBron, you'd better win a championship with him."
Baffert felt anything but champion-like this week at Churchill Downs in spite of holding the favorite's reins with Justify. His stable of horses had struggled.
"If anybody was watching my horses run here, I was stinking the place up," he smiled, making a joke that his wife must've wondered if he'd forgotten to pack deodorant.
That feeling of dread of worry didn't escape Baffert even after Justify got a clean break and moved into position. The trainer was startled by the blistering opening time of 22.24.
In the slop and the mud.
Then Baffert saw the 45.77 flash up next and was ready to concede the race.
"After that I was like, this poor, little horse, he's going to lay down," Baffert said of Justify with Mike Smith aboard. "There's no way."
There was a way.
And a win.
Now the anxiety can begin again for the Preakness and maybe even beyond.
Justify's final time of 2:04.20 was just one second slower than the Derby time of Baffert's American Pharoah, and that Triple Crown winner had a trip without the slop.
In the final eighth of the Kentucky Derby, despite the falling rain and the talented field, Baffert finally felt some peace.
"That last eighth, I knew he was going to win and I was just in awe of the performance," he said. "That's the best Kentucky Derby winning performance that I've brought up here. He did it. He just put himself up there with the greats."
Baffert is among the greats, too, earning his fifth Kentucky Derby victory, second-most in the race's storied history.
There could be more to come.
