With three Kentucky Derby prep races on tap Saturday, the journey to Louisville is starting to get serious.

On offer in the Holy Bull at Gulfstream Park, the Robert B. Lewis at Santa Anita, and the Withers at Aqueduct are 20 points to the winner and declining amounts to the second- through fifth-place finishers.

The Lewis is basically the Bob Baffert Invitational and yet further proof that the racing gods have quite a sense of humor. The race has drawn just five starters – which, as it happens, is one more than the Santa Monica one race prior – and three are trained by the two-time Triple Crown winner who returns from a Churchill Downs-imposed ban (for Medina Spirit’s betamethasone positive in the Kentucky Derby in 2021) this year.

Churchill execs are likely gnashing their teeth over this state of affairs, as Baffert has three of the top seven horses in Derby points.

Baffert’s trio figure to be the top three in the wagering, led by Citizen Bull, whom he trains for SF Racing and friends. Which is also the ownership group for whom he trains his other pair in here in Madaket Road and Rodriguez. What a game.

Citizen Bull, slated to make his first start of 2025, won three of four in 2024, including the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, and leads all horses with 40 Derby points. Martin Garcia will ride.

Both Madaket Road and Rodriguez graduated in their most recent starts – the former Dec. 26 and the latter Jan. 4 – after having finished second on debut.

All three Baffert trainees cost at least $485,000 at auction, led by Citizen Bull, who went for $675,000.

Both the Holy Bull and the Withers have fields of seven, which don’t exactly amount to bumper crops but look a lot better than five with three trained by one trainer.

The main attraction in the Holy Bull figures to be Ferocious. A Flatter colt, he was a $1.3 million purchase as a two-year-old who has a ways to go to earn back that price (a shade over $1 million left to earn, if you’re keeping score). A flashy winner on debut at Saratoga, the Gustavo Delgado trainee was then second as the favorite in both the Hopeful (G1) and Breeders Futurity (G1) before finishing a well-beaten fifth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

He currently has eight Derby points and will have Javier Castellano up.

He’ll face two horses who already have won stakes. Guns Loaded, trained by Jose D’Angelo, narrowly won the one-mile Mucho Macho Man over the strip, leading throughout before winning by a neck. And the Josie Carroll-trained He’s Not Joking scored a 10-1 upset in the Grey (G3) on the synthetic at Woodbine but ran poorly in his only try on dirt.

The Withers looks to be a wide-open affair with a pair of stakes-placed runners and one stakes winner in the field and a surprisingly Midlantic flavor.

The field includes three horses based in the Mid-Atlantic: Parx Future Stars winner Global Steve, trained at that track by Butch Reid; Delaware-based Surfside Moon for Chuckie Lawrence; and Laurel-based and Virginia-bred Omaha Omaha for Mike Gorham.

Global Steve, a Bucchero colt owned by Cash Is King LLC and LC Racing LLC, is two-for-two in his brief career. A $60,000 two-year-old buy, his two wins have both been at Parx and both at seven furlongs. In the Future Stars, he rallied from last on a sloppy track to win by 1 ½ lengths. Regular pilot Mychel Sanchez will ride.

Omaha Omaha was bred in Virginia by owners On Your Left Racing. He broke his maiden third time out at Delaware in October and followed that up six weeks later with a seven-length allowance score at Laurel. Most recently, he rallied willingly to be a clear second in the one-mile Jerome over the Big A strip.

Omaha Omaha has five Derby points and will have Raul Mena up, as he has been for all five of the Audible colt’s prior starts.

Surfside Moon, whose only prior win came on the turf, figures to be a longshot in this contest. His most recent dirt try came in the off-the-turf Laurel Futurity when a troubled fifth behind the talented Pascaline. Sahin Civaci is named.

The other stakes-placed runner is Mo Quality, runner-up to Coal Battle in the Smarty Jones at Oaklawn.

The Withers is slated to go off at 3:46 EST, followed by the Bob Lewis (4:30 EST) and the Holy Bull (5:13).

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