2019 Eclipse Awards: Brad Cox

Brad Cox hit 40 stakes wins in a year well before he hit his 40th birthday.

Cox will turn 40 on March 3. Horses he trains won 45 stakes during 2019. His stable earnings were a career-best $17.5 million, Cox won 16 graded races, and his season was good enough to make him an Eclipse Award finalist to be champion trainer of 2019.

:: Full list of 2019 Eclipse Awards finalists, including profile stories

Cox, a Louisville, Ky., native, has built his operation steady and strong, attracting an increasingly broad high-profile client base. For LNJ Foxwoods, he trains Covfefe, who’s a lock to win an Eclipse as champion female sprinter of 2019 and might also be champion 3-year-old filly. Cox also trains British Idiom, who won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies and will be champion 2-year-old filly of 2019.

Arklow ranked among the top long-distance turf horses in North America during 2019, and Cox got onto the Triple Crown train with Owendale and Warrior’s Charge, respectively the third- and fourth-place finishers in the Preakness Stakes.

Beau Recall went from a listed-stakes-level performer to a near Grade 1-winner after switching into the Cox barn for a 2019 campaign, and late in the year, Cox unveiled a potential monster, the 2-year-old filly Taraz, for owner-breeder Juddmonte Farms. There’s probably a lot more to come from Taraz in 2020 – and from Cox, too.