Former assistant to Charlie Whittingham and Bob Baffert has two shots at glory on the first Saturday in May, headed by Santa Anita Derby winner Practical Move – as he tells Steve Dennis
UPDATE (May 4): Practical Move scratched from Kentucky Derby with elevated temperature
The great and enduring beauty of the American Dream is that it can mean whatever you want it to mean. It simply sits in the consciousness like a bright sun, a beckoning finger, its potency, its legitimacy, its allure always morning-fresh for successive generations of dreamers.
As it gives, though, it also demands. The American Dream might demand change in its hopeful voyagers, certainly adaptability, definitely sacrifice, and it absolutely mandates hard work.
This is how a kid from Bavaria can land at LAX – a modern Ellis Island – with his whole future ahead of him, pick up a shovel and graft, walk a road he never imagined travelling, and end up on the brink of life-changing success and global renown.
“Life has mysterious paths,” says trainer Tim Yakteen, 58, who four decades ago made landfall in California on that most propitious date of July 4.
‘I feel very lucky’
“If I had stayed in Germany, I couldn’t imagine what I would have done, where I would have ended up. I am fortunate to have had these opportunities. I feel very lucky.”
Yakteen, like so many before him, changed his name along the long journey – the son of a Lebanese-born father and a German mother, his given name is Haitham, which even in the polyglot world of racing’s backstretch is a bit of a reach – and now that name is associated with two leading contenders for the Kentucky Derby, America’s greatest race.
Yakteen’s main hope is Santa Anita Derby winner Practical Move, a burly bull of a colt who will be among the favourites on the first Saturday in May. For back-up, he has Arkansas Derby third Reincarnate, whose past is intertwined with Yakteen’s own, as we’ll see.
It is Practical Move, though, who most easily quickens Yakteen’s otherwise laid-back pulse. “He’s the ideal model of a horse,” he says. “He has size, he has a great mind, and he’s understood how to use both. He’s the full package; he has what it takes.
“I saw another dimension to him at Santa Anita last time – he had to fight, he showed grit, determination, that’s something he’s learned how to do. Those other horses had the opportunity to go by him and they couldn’t.”
Practical Move – whose breeder Chad Brown may yet find himself in the unusual position of breeding a Derby winner before he trains one – owns earlier victories in a pair of G2 events, the Los Alamitos Futurity and the San Felipe. Solid credentials indeed, but his sire Practical Joke never won beyond a mile and the question of stamina needs an answer.
Yakteen gives the only one he can, saying: “Until he goes a mile and a quarter you don’t know. But most Kentucky Derby winners are somewhere near the pace, in the first flight of horses turning for home, and he’s a handy horse, he has the tactical versatility to get track position and give himself a chance.
‘The horse runs well for him’
“Last year was unique [the fastest opening quarter in Derby history]. You won’t see that happen again. Ramon Vazquez knows him well, the horse runs well for him, they’re a good team.”
For most of the horses in the Derby stamina is the unknown quantity, and Reincarnate, who will be ridden by three-time Derby winner John Velazquez, is no exception. Both his wins have come at a mile, and he isn’t yet the real deal that his more accomplished barnmate appears to be.
“Reincarnate is still developing, still working out his understanding about racing,” says Yakteen. “I learned a lot more about him in the Arkansas Derby and I think he should stay, but it’s all about helping him to get the distance, instilling that killer instinct to keep going.
“With five weeks between his races, I’m hoping for a big forward move from him. I think I saw a light come on at Oaklawn Park, and hopefully it will get brighter.”
There is, as everyone knows, a more fundamental difference between Practical Move and Reincarnate than we have seen on the track. Yakteen has trained Practical Move for all his seven races, whereas he has had Reincarnate in the barn only for his last two starts following his transfer from Bob Baffert, under the conditions that prevail while Baffert is suspended from Churchill Downs.
That makes, therefore, for considerable subtext around the situation, with many onlookers preferring to consider Reincarnate as ‘still Bob’s horse’, although no-one seemed to want to make the distinction back in 2002, when War Emblem moved from Frank Springer’s barn to Baffert three weeks before winning the Derby.
The situation brings out the diplomat in the trainer, as it must, although the affable, eloquent Yakteen tends in that direction anyway. “Maybe I have a thick skin,” he says, and that always helps.
‘I want to win a Derby for both of them’
“I enjoy working for both sets of connections. They all make things a lot of fun, we have very good relationships. Would it mean more to win a Derby with a horse I’ve had for his whole career, rather than one I’ve recently acquired? NO. If I can accomplish that task, for either client, then it won’t matter to me. Both sets of owners are good sports, and I want to win a Derby for both of them.”
One of the conditions of the move is that Yakteen can’t talk to Baffert about Reincarnat
e or, indeed, anything, which must grate a little given that Baffert was where it all started for Yakteen, and he has become accustomed to using the six-time Derby winner as a sounding board as he has built his career.
Yakteen didn’t know that it would be his career. He had come to California, an 18-year-old boy just out of high school, to join his sister and to start something new. His sister lived in Cypress, just down the road from Los Alamitos racetrack, and although Yakteen went the conventional route of enrolling at Cypress College and nailed his degree, the lure of the racetrack proved too strong.
“I started at the bottom,” says Yakteen, fulfilling another time-honoured clause in the covenant of the American Dream. “Rags to riches, eh?”
He mucked out stalls, got his hands dirty – to the audible horror of his faraway mother, who evidently didn’t think that could be much of a career – and later formed an alliance with Baffert, who was moving away from training Quarter horses to embark upon what would become a magnificent career with Thoroughbreds.
He spent a few years with Baffert, then went to work for all-time great Charlie Whittingham for six years, then returned to Baffert for another seven-year stint as assistant – at the time of Derby winners Silver Charm, Real Quiet and the aforementioned War Emblem – before becoming his own boss in September 2004.
‘Two of the greatest trainers ever’
That’s a resumé to beat anything Cypress College might have provided, and Yakteen is truly appreciative of his good fortune. “Bob and Charlie, two of the greatest trainers ever,” he says. “To work with them, and to be around other great Californian horsemen of the time, Bobby Frankel, Laz Barrera and the rest … what an opportunity for a young man.
“I listened to them, I absorbed every lesson I could, trying to build up my knowledge. I learned so much, but two of the most important things I took from Charlie were to have patience with horses, and confidence in them. Bob also has a lot of confidence in his horses and that aspect has stayed with me.”
Now Yakteen – who, having worked for the Bald Eagle and the Silver Fox, should really have a nickname of his own – has around 40 horses in his barn. He has trained a champion in the ill-fated sprinter Points Offthebench, sent out a personal-best 29 winners in 2022 and is almost halfway to that tally already this year, and becomes thoughtful when asked to clarify his own strengths as a trainer.
“Patience, I think, I hope,” he says. “The California circuit is very competitive and it’s important to get in synch with what’s available for the horses you have – to find the right races for those horses.
“I have a medium-sized stable, so maybe I could try to build up the numbers, but it’s more important to me to build up the quality of what we have.”
The evidence of that process is standing patiently in the shed row, waiting for Derby day to dawn. Practical Move and Reincarnate give Yakteen two clear shots at a transformative moment, and to talk about it makes him a little uneasy. Don’t get him started on superstitions – “I don’t feel comfortable chatting about that” – and he’s not altogether comfortable when asked about the pressures of the big-race build-up.
“I am very goal-oriented – I like to stay focused on the task, that’s how I handle it,” he says, before delivering the usual homily about having great staff, having a lot of confidence in the team, how it makes his job so much easier, saying all the right things to avoid having to talk about himself. “I just want things to go perfectly,” he adds, almost superfluously.
His escape valve is time spent in the backyard with his wife Millie Ball, a racing analyst and broadcaster at Santa Anita, and teenage sons Sam and Ben, “We live in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains,” he explains. “There’s plenty of wildlife, bears, mountain lions, deer, and we do a bit of landscaping out there, although I should probably just hire a gardener.”
‘The Kentucky Derby is the pinnacle’
However, there’s no use trying to small-talk a trainer with two Derby horses away from what comes next. It’s too big, all-important, all-consuming. “The Kentucky Derby is the pinnacle for any horseman, any trainer, any owner,” says Yakteen. “To win the Derby …”
A pause. Thoughts are collected, assessed, distributed.
“If I won the Derby, it would be a dream come true. And I’d want to do it again. I’d be more than happy with one, but I’d want to keep going. Winning the Derby wouldn’t be the end of something, but the beginning of a new chapter.”
Yakteen’s voice fades away. For a moment, perhaps, he’s 18 again, Haitham again, driving out of LAX on a road paved with possibilities into an unknowable future.
A boy can dream, can’t he? And as the old song goes, if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?
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