2018 Eclipse Awards: Newspaperofrecord
Given that the last six – and seven of the last eight –winners of the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf have been finalists for the champion 2-year-old filly Eclipse Award, one can say with certainty that the Eclipse electorate respects winners of the race.
To a point, that is.
While there is plenty of honor in being an Eclipse Award finalist, there is a world of difference between that and an actual Eclipse Award winner. So while it is true that many winners of the Juvenile Fillies Turf have been respected, the fact remains no winner of that Breeders' Cup event, first run in 2008, has been voted champion in a division that historically has been the sole property of main-track specialists.
This glass ceiling, however, is under serious threat of cracking. And it’s doubtful any objective party would take issue if Newspaperofrecord were to be the one to smash it, not after her dazzling turf campaign in 2018 that concluded with yet another breathtaking score in the Juvenile Fillies Turf.
:: 2018 Eclipse Finalists: Profiles and photos for all categories
Newspaperofrecord’s career began midway through the Saratoga meeting, and her ability was a poorly kept secret. Hammered down to 3-2, she managed to make that tiny price look like value as she cruised to a near-seven-length victory. But it wasn’t until after she won the Grade 2 Miss Grillo at Belmont Park in her second start in similar fashion – by a lopsided 6 1/2 lengths – that Newspaperofrecord began to elicit comparisons to a recent great.
“You’d have to say with that performance she ranks right up there with the top,” Chad Brown, who trains Newspaperofrecord for Seth Klarman’s Klaravich Stables, told Daily Racing Form. “We know who the top is.”
Brown’s obvious reference was to Lady Eli, whom he trained to win the 2014 Juvenile Fillies Turf, who was a divisional Eclipse Award finalist that year, and who famously overcame a bout with laminitis to eventually become the Eclipse Award-winning female turf champion of 2017.
This highly flattering comparison only gained credence after Newspaperofrecord went out and crushed her field in the Breeders’ Cup, winning yet again in isolation, by almost seven lengths. And it is not a mere sidebar that Newspaperofrecord covered the one mile of the Juvenile Fillies Turf in 1:39, which was 1.06 seconds faster than males went in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf two races later. That’s an enormous final time differential, which is also flattering to Newspaperofrecord.
Of course, almost everything about Newspaperofrecord has been special. This daughter of Lope de Vega, from the Holy Roman Emperor mare Sunday Times, was bred in Ireland by Allen Belshaw’s Times of Wigan, and she was part of a group of horses purchased by Brown on his first visit to the Tattersalls October yearling sale in England in 2017. Newspaperofrecord commanded a winning bid of just over $278,000. She has made that look like tremendous value, too.