By Bill Finley
So Pedro Monterrey Jr., who won 31 races in 2015 and not a single stakes race, received an Eclipse vote for the nation's outstanding jockey. And that ludicrous vote will certainly be more than enough to ignite the annual gripe fest that the Eclipse Awards are a broken system. Already this week, a prominent racing journalist wrote a column with the headline “Eclipse standards could use retooling.”
No, they couldn't.
The Eclipse Award system is a masterful one. Voters are given no guidelines or rules other than they must vote for horses or humans in the particular category where they fit. As much as we all love American Pharoah we are not allowed to vote for him as the top older dirt male. And with so little to work with, the voters get it right time after time. You may not always agree with their every decision and every horse that wins a championship, but never once in the 45-year history of the awards has a completely undeserving winner ever won anything. If some fool wants to vote for Pedro Monterrey Jr., let them. Monterrey didn't win an Eclipse Award, he got one meaningless vote from a clown.
Contrast this to how we elect our President. Al Gore can get more actual votes than George W. Bush, but can still somehow lose because of an archaic system known as the electoral college and a Supreme Court decision that revolved around how hanging was the hanging chad. Now, that's a broken system.
In fact, this was the one year where the voters really had a chance to blow it. Some smart people thought that American Pharoah mania might carry Victor Espinoza to an Eclipse Award as the sport's top jockey over Javier Castellano. In every statistical department that matters, Castellano's numbers dwarfed those of Espinoza. Yet, Castellano didn't ride American Pharoah, didn't compete on Dancing With The Stars, didn't constantly rub elbows with A list celebrities and isn't particularly flashy. Who would win? The best jockey in America, if not the world, or the rider whose 2015 accomplishments virtually boiled down to seven races, the seven he won aboard American Pharoah? Not only did the voters get it right, it was a landslide with Castellano winning by a margin of 184 to 70.
By the way, there have now been four jockeys that have ridden Triple Crown winners since the Eclipse Awards were instituted in 1971 and not one of them has been named champion jockey.
Other than Espinoza's second-place finish in the jockey race, it was a clean sweep for American Pharoah and his team, a fitting conclusion to one of the greatest racing campaigns of modern times. Even the Pedro Monterrey Jr. voter cast his Horse of the Year vote for American Pharoah, who was a unanimous choice with 261 votes. That's only happened one other time in the history of the Eclipse Awards, with John Henry in 1981. Even Secretariat was not a unanimous choice in his Triple Crown year, 1973.
Baffert (trainer) and Ahmed Zayat (owner and breeder) deserved their awards because of how they so effectively managed American Pharoah, how they did the sporting thing and raced in all the races that mattered and because in their categories there was no opponent that had the overwhelming credentials that Castellano had.
The voters also did a good job refraining from voting for the one-hit wonders from Europe that won Breeders' Cup races. I never thought it was a good idea to give a foreign horse an Eclipse Award off one race on U.S. soil, even a race as important as a Breeders' Cup one. Found (Ire) received only 38 votes in the Filly & Mare turf category–173 fewer than Tepin–despite her win in the GI Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf.
None of this is meant to say that I agree with every choice the voters made. The filly and mare sprint category was a brutally tough one and the credentials of all the top candidates were relatively unimpressive. But La Verdad won the award despite not winning a Grade I race all year, perhaps an Eclipse first. My vote went to GI Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint winner Wavell Avenue, who beat La Verdad head-to-head on that occasion. To me, you have to win at least one Grade I race to merit a championship.
I also voted for Liam's Map over Honor Code in the older male dirt category, but have no problem with the election of Honor Code. Neither, I'm sure, does Lane's End Farm, which hit the cold trifecta is this division. Tonalist rounded out the top three in this division, meaning all three Eclipse finalist in this very important category will be standing this year at Lane's End.
But as the night ended and the last trophy was handed out, the 2015 Eclipse Awards were all about American Pharoah, with the voters also deserving a pat on the back. It was a job well done by all.
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