This is how talented Point Given is: he did not want to load in the gate for today's Haskell Invitational, spotted four horses a half-dozen lengths for half a mile, then hung in the stretch. Still, when he crossed the finish line at Monmouth Park, he had left little doubt he was better than any other horse in the nation, if not the world.
This is how much pressure there is on the trainer and jockey of Point Given: moments after Bob Baffert and Gary Stevens had teamed up to win the Haskell for their third Grade I victory in a row with Point Given, they exchanged words in the winner's circle before Stevens stormed off.
The disagreement had to do with Baffert's instructions to Stevens and how the jockey did or did not follow them. As soon as Point Given gutted out a half-length victory over the lightly raced long shot Touch Tone, Baffert fired first. ''He rode him terribly,'' an irritated Baffert said of Stevens, a Hall of Fame rider who has won three Kentucky Derbys.
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