BREEDERS' CUP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

October 30, 2026

Bob Baffert

Tom Ryan

Hughes

Keeneland Race Course

Juvenile

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Congratulations to the team behind Hughes here, Bob Baffert, Tom Ryan. Tom, you have a lot of partners in on this horse. I'm sure they're all enjoying this victory right now.

Bob, I'll start with you. It seemed like this was kind of the first race where he really was challenged. Had you seen in the morning or in his other races where you weren't worried about maybe the possibility of him getting into more of a fight in the race?

BOB BAFFERT: Yeah, I was -- actually Rafael Bejarano, he helped get this horse ready. He worked him the last couple times. Actually, he didn't even know who the horse was. I said work this horse, and let him work. He was going to work with another horse of mine, but there was groups of horses in front of him. I just left him alone.

It was a group that broke off like six lengths in front of him. He just sat behind them. Then all of a sudden in the stretch, he just came up, went around them, caught them, and went past them with ease. But Bejarano came back and said this horse is ready to win. When you run him, he's ready. He didn't know it was Hughes. I go, oh, it was Hughes. He goes, oh, he was?

I looked into him. The group in front of him, they must have been nice horses. One of them was Ocelli, who ran in the Derby. After that, Rafael worked him for me the other day, and he said he just felt so much horse. He's the kind of horse that he's never been battle tested. You never know how they're going to respond until they -- today at the quarter pole, I thought, well, we're going to find out what he's made of.

When a horse came to him, he just caught another gear. You like to see that. Sometimes they'll come to him -- especially when they're going that fast on this racetrack -- like I said, he does it, and he does it with ease. He comes back like it didn't take much out of him. He's just a really superior 2-year-old.

Q. Tom, this horse, the name Hughes, obviously a gold medal performance by his namesake. Picking out when you name a horse like this after somebody like that and you have expectations, did you always have the expectations of this horse from the beginning?

TOM RYAN: We did, and the name was -- he was named the night after Jack Hughes did win that gold medal. He was so proud to be an American that night. That's what really struck me the way he said it and he meant it. He was proud of the legacy he was leaving for the kids coming behind him.

There was pressure in that, and there's pressure in the fact that my wife is a Hughes. All of a sudden, I had family pressure, the Jack Hughes pressure. It's worked out incredibly well. It's a good horse with a great name, turned out to a great story. We're very proud of him. He showed up today in front of a great crowd with a great ownership group.

This is the pinnacle of 2-year-old racing right here. This is it, this is championship racing. He's not let us down. He's 5 for 5 now and couldn't be more proud.

THE MODERATOR: Undefeated and now heading in as the early favorite for the Kentucky Derby.

Q. Bob, you've had so many really good 2-year-olds. How special is this one?

BOB BAFFERT: I think the one you won now is special. This horse, we felt pretty good about it, the way he's been working. I really thought Salahudin ran well. I thought he was going to get a big piece of it turning for home, but he's a horse that down the road, when they go further, on this short stretch, he had to be up there close.

I'm just proud that they showed up. As a trainer -- like Miss Monica, she didn't get the trip, but she showed up. That's all you can be, you're proud of your team, everybody that -- we did a great job preparing them and bringing them here and running.

These horses, they bring you to these big races. There wasn't anything planned out. We ran and broke his maiden at Los Alamitos. We brought him up slowly, and everything worked out.

Today was his day to shine. Those four colts were really good colts, and we're going to be hearing a lot about them. I think the 2-year-old crop is really strong this year. It should be exciting hopefully next spring.

Q. Did you have anything that you specifically told Flavien, since he hadn't ridden the horse before, about this horse that you needed to know?

BOB BAFFERT: Yeah, don't break like Monica (laughter).

The thing about these jockeys, they watch -- now they can see the videos. You don't really have to tell these guys anything. J.J. Hernandez, he's a good jockey. He gets out of the gate. He probably could have won on him too. He's my guy in California.

But Prat, I just told him he's keen, get away clean there. Always wanting to take the blinkers off of him. He has a little blinker. But he will look around -- like, when we won in California, I said, oh, I wouldn't take him off because when he gets a lead -- when he gets a lead by six, seven, he's looking around everywhere.

Today it was pedal to the metal. I think Prat, it's like everything went well. You need a good horse to win these things, but you need the trip. We had both.

Q. When you all buy these horses, yes, you want to have an unbeaten juvenile to be the champion, but I assume you buy these horses for spring at Churchill Downs. You know what it takes to win the Derby. Talk about the attributes of Hughes.

BOB BAFFERT: First of all, Tom Ryan thought of this thing. He came to me a few years ago and said, hey, we want to do this. Buy colts, where you train them, we'll have Donato Lanni, we'll pick them out. Our first year, Tom, take it from here?

TOM RYAN: I think our first year we -- we had Authentic and Eight Rings, and Charlatan, and all three of them Horse of the Year, Derby winner, all three great. Our investment that year was $8 million, and we returned about $60 million.

We kicked on from there. We've had a lot of success since then. It is a great team effort. There's attention to detail at every step of the way from just buying them and managing them until they get to Bob. Bob manages -- he's got a great team around him.

We really do focus on attention to detail, surrounding ourselves with good people, and trying to make good decisions along the way and removing the ego from the process.

We've been very lucky. We've had a lot of owners stay with us through the process, with Jack Wolf, Starlight, Sol Kumin, Barbara Banke.

To have cornerstone capital like that at the beginning of each year is very beneficial when you're raising money.

BOB BAFFERT: And they have fun.

THE MODERATOR: That's what it's all about. Congratulations to Hughes and all your partners and Bob as well.