2013 Eclipse Finalists
 

Horse of the Year: Mucho Macho Man, Will Take Charge, Wise Dan

Two-Year-Old Male: Havana, New Year’s Day, Shared Belief
Two-Year-Old Filly: Chriselliam (IRE), Ria Antonia, She’s a Tiger

Three-Year-Old Male: Orb, Palace Malice, Will Take Charge
Three-Year-Old Filly: Beholder, Close Hatches, Princess of Sylmar

Older Male: Game On Dude, Mucho Macho Man, Wise Dan
Older Female: Joyful Victory, Royal Delta, Tiz Miz Sue

Male Sprinter: Points Offthebench, Sahara Sky, Secret Circle
Female Sprinter: Dance to Bristol, Groupie Doll, Mizdirection

Male Turf Horse: Magician (IRE), Point of Entry, Wise Dan
Female Turf Horse: Dank (GB), Laughing (IRE), Mizdirection

Steeplechase Horse: Divine Fortune, Gustavian, Italian Wedding

Owner: Juddmonte Farms, Midwest Thoroughbreds, Kenneth and Sarah Ramsey
Breeder: Adena Springs, Morton Fink, Kenneth and Sarah Ramsey

Trainer: Bob Baffert, Bill Mott, Todd Pletcher
Jockey: Javier Castellano, Joel Rosario, Gary Stevens
Apprentice Jockey: Victor Carrasco, Manuel Franco, Edgard Zayas

How is NOT Honor Code a finalist as Juvenile Colt???? :zz:

I think Honor Code has a lot of potential and he had a very good 2-year-old season ... but he shouldn't have been a finalist.

Winning at least a single Grade 1 race is generally important to having a championship season.

Female Turf Horse: Dank (GB), Laughing (IRE), Mizdirection

Kind of sad Laughing died today of Colic........

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Horse of the Year: WISE DAN

Two-Year-Old Male: New Year’s Day
Two-Year-Old Filly: Ria Antonia

Three-Year-Old Male: Will Take Charge
Three-Year-Old Filly: Beholder

Older Male: Mucho Macho Man
Older Female: Royal Delta

Male Sprinter: Secret Circle
Female Sprinter: Groupie Doll

Male Turf Horse: Wise Dan
Female Turf Horse: Dank (GB)

Steeplechase Horse: Gustavian

Owner: Kenneth and Sarah Ramsey
Breeder: Kenneth and Sarah Ramsey

Trainer: Todd Pletcher
Jockey: Javier Castellano
Apprentice Jockey: Edgard Zayas

This is how I see the results this year,
__________________

I'm surprised that so many people who are writing about their selections are not choosing Will Take Charge as Horse of the Year.

Citing his performance in the Triple Crown series as a negative isn't entirely correct either considering his Derby finish could have been much different had Verrazano not stopped in front of him.

I can't agree with that Sightseek. We could find a number of "could have been" situations for a lot of horses. The most prominent might be that Princess of Sylmar could have been, would have been division champion and maybe one of the three finalists for HOY had she not run in the Distaff. We have to go with what did happen over what could have happened.

Will Take Charge
Havana
The horse from Ireland
Will Take Charge
Princess
GOD
Delta
Secret Circle
Dance to Bristol
Point of Entry
Dank
Italian Wedding
Ramsey
Ramsey
Baffert
Rosario
Franco

i'd vote for him before MMM. but not ahead of wise dan.

Horse of the Year: Wise Dan

Two-Year-Old Male: Havana
Two-Year-Old Filly: Chriselliam (IRE)

Three-Year-Old Male: Will Take Charge
Three-Year-Old Filly: Princess of Sylmar

Older Male: Mucho Macho Man
Older Female: Royal Delta

Male Sprinter: Points Offthebench
Female Sprinter: Groupie Doll

Male Turf Horse: Wise Dan
Female Turf Horse: Laughing (IRE)

Steeplechase Horse: Italian Wedding (Don't care or know but like the soup)

Owner: Kenneth and Sarah Ramsey
Breeder: Kenneth and Sarah Ramsey

Trainer: Todd Pletcher
Jockey: Gary Stevens
Apprentice Jockey: Present

Mike Smith should have been nominated

they don't have nominations, do they? the finalists, i believe, are the top vote getters in each category.

In either case the finalists are not picked randomly. Mike Smith had a stellar year regardless.

they're picked randomly in that you never know what the various voters are thinking...or what they know, how closely they followed racing all year. there have been some interesting picks to show as finalists over the years.

How closely the voters were following racing all year is clearly reflected in the utter embarrassment that Authenticity failed to appear on enough ballots to finish as a finalist. Because her PP's were mistakenly omitted from the Older Fillies & Mares stats, oblivious ballots didn't include her. As Jay Privman said last week on ATR, it's a litmus test on who takes the process seriously.

DITTO...............SHOULDA COULDA WOULDA

exactly the kind of stuff i'm talking about. if people don't know what they're doing, they should toss their ballot rather than do something stupid out of ignorance.

How on Earth can anyone really consider Honor Code to be the champion two year old male?

His only stakes win was the Remsen.

By default, you HAVE to have Havana higher rated. NYD won the BCJ, which is far more important than the Remsen.

That leaves Shared Belief vs Honor Code..............

Not saying Authenticity didn't deserve to be on the ballot (consistency of quality ought to be acknowledged and her level and volume of races at that level are more than clear with not only graded wins but regular G1 appearances and placings against horses like Beholder), but people argue Honor Code shouldn't be a nomineee because he didn't win a G1 in 2013, so could they have conceivably been so stuck on that G1 winning achievement that they just went 'didn't win a G1, not gonna vote for her'? Maybe they did think of her despite the lack of PPs and didn't take the process seriously in a different way than you thought.

There isn't a 'ballot'. The NTRA/NTWBA/DRF assembles a Past Performance booklet that has 'candidates' by division. Authenticity, Streaming and some others were left out of it in a case of apparent omissions. As for 'not a G1 winner', Funny Proposition managed to be included in the group of suggested Older Filly & Mare considerations but the winner of $830k between Jan-Nov wasn't.

Simply put, it's an embarrassment.

She wasn't a likely or worthy winner of award... Basically she was Satished

No one suggested she was going to be the winner of the award. She was simply the clear 2nd best Older Filly & Mare of 2013 and deserved to be recognized as such as an Eclipse finalist behind division winner Royal Delta. The mechanism involved in 'assisting' voters was slapdash and poorly executed. There wasn't anyone at the 3 organizations that acutely omitted Authenticity, but it doesn't diminish what a farce the resultant outcome is due to laziness of voters.

Ah ok then that's just stupid. They effectively create a short list for nomination when they send this out. If they can do points systems for the Derby and Win and You're In for the Breeders' Cup, surely there could be some reasonable threshold where they can say 'if you do X, Y, or Z your PPs end up in the booklet.' That takes out any opportunity for this level of facepalmery.

you would have to think, tho, that if you're asking racing people to vote, that you wouldn't have to send out info. if they follow so little of it as to require assistance in knowing who did what, why do they have a vote?

Absolutely.

they should have to answer questions about racing and horses to get the vote. have doug put together a trivia question package, revedere to send photos for them to identify (with saddles cloths appropriately edited of course)....that's a good start to make sure they have the credentials to help decide awards.
i mean, what is this, the people's choice awards?

Lost all in interest in process after Blame was denied.

Regards,

A. Stall

Ria Antonia wins a Breeders Cup race on a DQ, becomes a finalist. Did nothing prior to her "win"

Why should there be a category just for the sake of giving out an award? A certain standard has to be established.
Otherwise you can have Ria Antonia win it and be in the same eclipse category as some of the greats in the past. Sad.

I don't agree. As with any yearly award, there are going to be "better" winners than others. What kind of a standard would you like to establish?

Should they not give out Best Picture Oscars if the films of a certain year don't compare to the Godfather?

Standard of number of races run in graded stakes and placing in these races should be considered. You can win one or two races and still be a finalist is dumb. If the connections want an eclipse, they shall work for it rather than cherry picking races as they see fit. Winning a BC race is almost a lock to be a finalist. Putting that much weight on one race is absurd. Horses like Authenticity who ran 9 times and finished in the money all 9 times with 7 being graded races. Tiz Miz Sue ran only four and won twice is a finalist in the same category.

I agree that too much emphasis on the Breeders Cup isn't a good thing. But in the case of the 2 year olds they, like older horses are running less than they used to. Ria Antonia won as many grade 1 races as any other 2 year old filly here last year and while she wouldn't be my pick to win the award, I see no problem with her as a finalist. Should Shared Belief not be a finalist for last year? He made only 3 starts.

I also agree that Authenticity should have been a finalist but I think the outrage shown over her omission has been blown way out of proportion. Royal Delta is going to be a deserving runaway winner of that award.

I'd like to see people this passionate over some of the real things plaguing horse racing. Like the on the turf, off the turf fiasco at Fair Grounds this week that I didn't see anyone mention. Authenticity not being a finalist for an award she wasn't going to come close to winning anyway ranks about 9,999th in things people should be mad about right now in horse racing.

I agree with you that in the big picture the Authenticity "snub" is hardly a big issue on its own. However unlike the other issue that you elude to, putting together a list of pp's for top contenders is a clear cut, simple thing to do and racing can't even get that right.

Bigger Eclipse voting issue is that there are far too many unqualified or just plain clueless people voting.

http://www.derbytrail.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52864

the other 9998 things in racing (or thereabouts) also get discussed on this board. and having people without much clue regarding racing having a say in racing related things is a problem. especially if one has an agenda, joe drape is one that comes to mind.
people discussing voting doesn't necessarily equate to 'outrage'. it's just one of myriad topics discussed on here.

My mistake, one person mentioned it. I wonder how many people even realize why it is an issue. But there are a dozen posts about Authenticity not being a finalist for an award she isn't winning anyway.

Sorry, but one seems like an important issue to me and one doesn't. Just my opinion of course and I enjoy all of the discussions here. But one actually impacted people and one didn't.

Sure and this is a problem baseball is facing right now as well. Seems like an easy fix though, less voters.

The reason it's important is because it's a bad message that is a direct disincentive to the way in which Authenticity was campaigned. She ran 9x from Jan-Nov as opposed to horses who ran wholly incomplete seasons. Authenticity also deserved to be recognized because rather than give up on the mare after a series of setbacks and simply breed her, the connections waited out her physical issues and gave her a chance to fulfill her potential. That's also a positive message that deserved acknowledgement. And as Chuck points out, her being overlooked is an indictment of the way things are run and of those that are supposed to be taking the sport seriously.

a dozen? and of course horses included or left out will be discussed in a thread about eclipse awards.

Sorry, but I don't agree Steve about its' importance.

I'm glad they waited out her issues and actually raced her, because that is what racehorses do, but are we in such bad shape that we need to send positive messages to connections for doing that?

It was 10, not 12. Got me.

My point remains the same. I wonder if there would have been this kind of outrage had Steve not said anything. I follow the sport very closely and until Steve said something I didn't even realize she was omitted, because I never even considered her a winner of the award.

Maybe that is what happened to the voters. I don't know. Just so there is no confusion, I understand why this is an issue, I just wish issues that actually impact people were discussed with this much passion.

This happens every year, obviously this is more personal for Steve in this case, his comments should be viewed as such.

There are a lot of people voting that do not take it seriously or do it fairly, hard to hold these awards with any value given that light.