Eclipse Awards In Need of Change

By Bill Finley, Special to ESPN.com 

Yes, Main Sequence is an older male horse who had an outstanding year. 

No, he should not have been named champion older male horse. 

While those may seem like completely contradictory statements, they are anything but. Since the industry first began awarding year-end championships there was, for the longest time, an unwritten rule that older male and female year-end awards would go to the best dirt horses in that category and the turf categories were reserved for the outstanding turf horses. 

With grass racing not becoming prominent in this country until the 1950s, the first-ever turf championship was awarded to a horse named Iceberg in 1953. From that time through 2009, there was only one case where the voters chose a “grass” horse for the older male championship. Back when both the Daily Racing Form and the Thoroughbred Racing Associations had their own championship awards, DRF voters went for Fort Marcy in 1970. He was a grass horse but at least he made two starts on the dirt that year, neither one of which resulted in a win. The TRA gave the older horse championship to Nodouble. 

Fast forward to 2009 and not a single other horse considered a “grass horse” had won the older male title. They added a champion older female category in 1971 and to this day it has never been won by a horse who didn’t have success on dirt. 

Things started to get tricky in 2009 when Gio Ponti was named champion older male horse. While considered a turf horse, he did at least race twice on something other than grass when finishing second on “sort of dirt” in the Strub and the Breeders’ Cup Classic over the synthetic surface at Santa Anita. 

In 2011, the voters again gave the older male title to a horse generally regarded as a grass horse in Acclamation. But, once again, he at least had some non-turf credibility as he raced on the dirt in the Charles Town Classic and won the Pacific Classic on a synthetic surface. 

In the years 2012 and 2013? Once again, the voters went to the grass angle with Wise Dan. In 2012, he won the Ben Ali on a synthetic track and was second on the dirt in the Stephen Foster, so he did have some credibility as a dirt horse. When he won the older male title in 2013 his “dirt” credentials were even thinner. He made one non-turf start, finishing second on the Polytrack at Keeneland in an off-the-turf Shadwell Turf Mile. 

So that’s four grass horses that won the older male title in five years, with the only exception being Blame in 2010. But at the very least each one of them had made at least one start during the year in a non-turf race of some sort. 

Not last year. Main Sequence never stepped foot on the dirt, winning all four of his starts, all four Grade Is on the grass. In the process, he became the first older male champion in history to start exclusively on the grass during his championship season. 

The problem is not with Main Sequence, per se. He’s a terrific horse, was a very deserving winner of the male grass championship and a legitimate Horse of the Year contender. The problem is that it is unfair for grass horses to be eligible for two categories, the grass championship and the overall championship in their age group, while dirt horses are only eligible in one category. 

Main Sequence benefited from the fact that no traditional dirt horse had a particularly good year. Palace Malice, a dirt horse, was second in the voting, receiving 103 votes to 127 for Main Sequence. Most of those votes no doubt came from old-schoolers like myself who thought he was the best dirt horse in the country and should have won in a category that traditionally has been for dirt horses only. 

Then again, those who voted for Main Sequence for older champion male did nothing wrong. There is no rule saying a horse has to have run on or won on the dirt to be eligible for the title. And that’s exactly why we need such a rule or a change in the name of the category. 

When they created the turf champion category in 1953, I doubt very much anyone ever considered that grass horses would get votes in what was then called the “handicap” category and later changed to “Older Male.” But now it’s happening and happening with regularity and has created an imbalance in the Eclipse Awards favoring grass horses. 
Fixing most things that are wrong in horse racing is complicated if not impossible. But this one is easy. Change the names of two categories. The Older Male becomes the Older Dirt Male and the Older Female becomes the Older Dirt Female. Problem solved. 

For more articles on horseracing by Bill Finley and others, visit www.espn.com.