2018 Eclipse Awards: Expert Eye

Niggling notions and faint fears had impeded the translation of Expert Eye’s talent to production out on the racetrack. The starting gate, for instance, set his brain buzzing, sapping energy, severing the focus required to win the very best races.

Finally, during the second part of 2018, Expert Eye got his act together. He flirted with long-awaited top-level success and, after traveling from England, finally found it, winning the Breeders’ Cup Mile on Nov. 3 at Churchill Downs. His Breeders’ Cup Mile triumph has made him a finalist for an Eclipse Award as champion turf male.

Expert Eye, a Juddmonte Farms homebred by Acclamation and out of Exemplify, by Dansili, so impressed in winning his first two starts as a 2-year-old of 2017 that he was an odds-on favorite in Europe’s most important 2-year-old race, the Group 1 Dewhurst.

But it was there that Expert Eye’s foibles materialized, the colt turning in a supremely flat run to finish ninth. The issue persisted into the first part of 2018 before trainer Michael Stoute and his staff began taming Expert Eye’s demons.

“We had massive issues with him in the [starting gate], but he’s calmed down a lot,” jockey Frankie Dettori said. “He used to lose his race before the race, but now he’s calm, he’s a proper racehorse.”

Still, when Stoute walked onto the Churchill Downs turf course for the first time during Breeders’ Cup week, he did not come away smiling. Cold, wet weather had turned the autumn course soft and bumpy; Stoute’s horse preferred his ground smooth and quick.

Yet the colt he had brought to Louisville definitely had turned a corner. His best wins of 2018 had come at the Group 3 level, but Expert Eye was second in the Group 1 Sussex Stakes on Aug. 1 at Goodwood and five weeks later endured a traffic-impeded journey in finishing third in the Group 1 Prix du Moulin at Longchamp in France.

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Expert Eye broke from the gate like an old pro in the Breeders’ Cup Mile, scrambling out of his stall and right into the fray. Dettori said he had perfect position – for three strides. By the time Expert Eye hit the first turn, he was farther back than Dettori had intended and Stoute wanted.

In the end, that didn’t matter. On a course favoring outside paths, Dettori eventually wended his way well off the rail leaving the far turn and entering the homestretch, but it was not until Expert Eye was three-sixteenths of a mile from the finish that he really got low, bore down, and found his stride. He and Dettori bore down on the leaders and hit the front a few yards before the finish. The winning margin reads a half-length, but look closely and you can see Expert Eye already easing up, having bested every beast who stood between him and victory. It was the best race of his life, the culmination of two seasons of work and development.

And it might have been good enough to make him a champion.