2019 Eclipse Awards: Chad Brown

A third straight Eclipse Award as North America’s leading trainer, a personal-best $27.54 million in stable earnings during 2018, and 47 graded stakes victories, equaling a career-best. Maybe it seemed like things couldn’t get any better for Chad Brown – but, somehow, they did.

Brown actually had fewer starts in 2019 than in 2018, but he continued concentrating the quality of his stable, one of the best in all of racing history, and improved during 2019 upon his incredible 2018 season. Brown’s runners took down $31.1 million in purses during the year, nearly $4 million more than Steve Asmussen’s second-highest total in North America. Asmussen’s barn earned $27.5 million from 2,209 starters and 433 winners, while Brown had only 823 starters and 222 winners.

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

It was an awesome year, and Brown is the odds-on favorite to take home his fourth Eclipse Award as leading trainer in North America.

Brown’s stable won 54 graded stakes during 2019, led by Bricks and Mortar, a slam dunk as champion older turf horse and the likely Horse of the Year. Bricks and Mortar did all his work on turf, and while Brown continues to attract more high-level dirt runners, his bread and butter remains the turf courses of North America, over which his horses won a remarkable 45 graded stakes during the year.

Brown got another excellent season out of the champion turf mare Sistercharlie, who won the Grade 1 Diana at Saratoga making her first start in two-thirds of a year, and probably earned Uni an Eclipse as leading older female turf horse by winning the Breeders’ Cup Mile with her following a smashing Keeneland score in Grade 1 First Lady Stakes.