It's close, but I'm siding with Accelerate because he raced all year long and won all the Grade I races he was in, five of them. His only loss was by a neck to a horse (City of Light) who was an impressive winner in the Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile. That's an impressive resume to me.
I'm not one of those people who thinks, 'It's always been done this way, so it's got to be done this way now.' In terms of tradition in racing, I know there are a lot of people who say a Triple Crown winner should be Horse of the Year no matter what. I just don't think that way. If Justify had raced all year long it would be a slam dunk. But since we didn't get to see that, as impressive as he looked in the Triple Crown, when you look back at it, how good was that crop of 3-year-olds? I'm not sure that they were that great.
He won his races in slow times and the Belmont S. was run in a controversial manner. All those things factor into my decision. If Justify had been the first Triple Crown winner in 40 years, I am sure a lot of people would be looking at this differently. But I'm not looking at it that way.
I'm not saying the Triple Crown is easy to win. What I'm looking at is the two horses side by side. While it was impressive that he was undefeated, he only raced for four months, he raced against a group where I'm not sure how strong the quality was and we never got a chance to see him race against older horses.
Jagow is an Eclipse Award voter.
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