‘Rebuilding’ trainer John Sadler seeks big wins at Santa Anita

By most people’s standards, John Sadler had a good year in 2023, when he finished among the top 10 Southern California thoroughbred trainers in race wins and purse earnings.

But for the man who’d spent 2022 on top of the world as trainer of Flightline, last year was a comedown.

” ’23 was a rebuilding year,” Sadler said this week.

Sadler can take a step – maybe two – back to the heights Sunday when he runs Subsanador in the $500,000 Grade I Santa Anita Handicap and Scatify in the $300,000 Grade II San Felipe Stakes for 3-year-olds, the featured races on a card postponed from Saturday because of the rain forecast.

It won’t be easy.

Although the San Felipe field got softer when trainer Bob Baffert said Saturday he will scratch Nysos from this race and wait for the April 6 Santa Anita Derby, Scatify must face two other strong Baffert horses. On Santa Anita’s original morning line, Nysos was the 1-5 favorite, with Scatify and Baffert-trained Imagination the 6-1 co-second choices, and Baffert’s Wine Me Up at 8-1.

In the Santa Anita Handicap, Subsanador, a 5-year-old Argentine import, is 5-1 on the morning line behind San Pasqual Stakes winner Newgrange (5-2), New Orleans shipper Highland Falls (3-1) and Baffert-trained Newgate (4-1).

There’s reason to expect Subsanador and Scatify to improve on their recent results, and if either wins, it will be Sadler’s first Grade I or II victory since Flightline was retired undefeated following an 8¼-length romp in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland, in Kentucky, on Nov. 5, 2022.

Last year was the first since 2013 that Sadler’s stable failed to produce a Grade I victory.

Having to get over the retirement of one of American racing’s all-time greats is a high-class problem to which few trainers can relate. Another at Santa Anita these days is Baffert, who trained Triple Crown winners American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018. Baffert said this week it was “sort of depressing” when Justify was retired – unbeaten in six starts, like Flightline – as a 3-year-old.

Baffert said he talked with Sadler about it when Flightline went to stud, and told him: “Man, you don’t know what you’re going to go through.”

“Everybody’s talking about your horse, (it’s) constant excitement, you’re there,” Baffert said this week. “Then, all of a sudden, he’s retired and he’s gone, and you’re back to … (trying to) find another one.”

That search for the next one is why Sadler, a 67-year-old Long Beach native, said no when friends asked if we would retire when Flightline did.

“There’s probably not a second Flightline in anybody’s lifetime,” Sadler said. “But my focus is still getting nice horses and winning big races.

“Fortunately I’ve got good clients and I’ve got good stock coming into the barn.”

Sadler calls Subsanador and Scatify “interesting horses.”

Subsanador, a Group 1-level winner in Argentina, was bet down to 13-10 odds in his U.S. debut Dec. 26 but finished fourth in the San Antonio. Hector Berrios will ride Subsanador in Sunday’s 1¼-mile Big ‘Cap as Flavien Prat moves to Salesman.

“He didn’t really get a good trip. He was kind of in between horses. So it wasn’t quite the race we were expecting the first time out,” said Sadler, who is looking for his fourth Santa Anita Handicap win. “He’s trained much better than it went last time, so hopefully he can run to his works.”

Scatify, a son of Justify, broke his maiden first time out at Los Alamitos and then faded to third behind the dominant Nysos in the Feb. 3 Robert Lewis Stakes. Berrios will ride him again in the 1 1/16-mile race.

Scatify missed some training because of wet weather before the Lewis.

“So he was a little short (on condition), got a little tired,” Sadler said. “I think if he hadn’t missed the training, he definitely would have been a good second.

“He wasn’t going to beat the winner.”

The Baffert runners in the San Felipe are challenged only by Scatify and John Shirreffs-trained Mc Vay in what has become a four-horse race with the scratch of Nysos. Baffert said Saturday morning he’d been “on the fence” about running Nysos but decided the top-ranked U.S. 3-year-old didn’t need this race as much as his other two entrants.

With Baffert 3-year-olds ineligible for the May 4 Kentucky Derby because of ongoing sanctions by Churchill Downs, Scatify and Mc Vay are the ones chasing the 50, 25, 15 and 10 Derby qualifying points allotted by finishing position. Scatify has six points, McVay four, going in; it normally takes 40-plus to get into the 20-horse Derby.

The final Derby points race at Santa Anita will be the Santa Anita Derby, worth 100 points to the winner.

“He (Scatify) is a nice horse. He can run. Hopefully he can keep improving,” Sadler said. “It’s still a wide-open year (for Derby prospects).”

That’s enough to motivate a trainer looking for the next star.

“It’s fun to develop young horses into whatever they can develop into,” Sadler said. “I really feel like I’m in good shape, and I’ll go forward.”