Updating Richard Sowers' Majors

[stareagle]

A couple years ago, I was given a copy of Richard Sowers' book The Abstract Primer of Thoroughbred Racing. I enjoyed the concept of trying to compare eras by selecting 110 "major races" every year from 1946-2003, especially for trainers and jockeys. It doesn't work as well for horses, because they don't run as often as they did in the "good old days", but it still makes for an interesting read.

Anyway, I've spent the last few weeks bringing the lists up to date, and I'm keeping the results on my website at http://davehogg.com/sportsblog/?page_id=27.

(Someone else may have been doing this all along - heck, Sowers himself might be - but I couldn't find anything, so I did it myself.)

The hardest part has been coming up with the "right" list of the 110 biggest races each year. I stayed close to Sowers' 2003 list, mainly making adjustments as races have been added or subtracted from the Grade I list. I did break one of his rules - he only counted races run in North America, but I'm using the Dubai World Cup.

At the moment, I'm not using any of the new Breeders' Cup races, although I considered adding the Dirt Mile to the 2008 list. I decided to wait until 2009 to see what kind of field it draws this fall.

The Preakness was the 25th major of 2008, and Big Brown became the first three-time winner. Einstein and Intangaroo have two each. Using Sowers' 4-2-1 point system, BB has 12, Einstein 10, Intangaroo 8 and Golden Doc A and Little Belle have 6 each.

I thought that it would be interesting to track the leading horses, trainers and jockeys of the decade, but those races are all basically over. Lava Man would need three wins to pass Azeri's 48 points, while Curlin would need six to tire her. Bobby Frankel has a 100-71 lead over Todd Pletcher in training wins, and Jerry Bailey has a 96-72 edge on Edgar Prado among jockeys.

(Bailey, obviously, isn't going to add to his total, but he's the only jockey to win more than 12 races in a year since 2000 - he did it five times - so it will be tough for Prado to catch up.)

One odd note - Sowers published the book after 2003, when Frankel (27 wins) and Bailey (28) both had record-setting seasons. No one has broken 20 in either category since, and no jockey has gotten within half of Bailey's total. He had 13 in 2005 and Prado (2006) and Gomez (2007) both had years with a dozen. Pletcher had 19 wins last year.