2019 Eclipse Awards: Mitole

Bill Heiligbrodt loves a fast horse, and he and his wife, Corinne, campaigned one of the quickest in the land last year in Mitole.

The colt dazzled on one of the world’s biggest stages Nov. 2, when he captured the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Santa Anita. It was his fourth Grade 1 victory during a season in which he went 6 for 7 for earnings of $2.7 million, with his other defining win last year the Metropolitan Handicap. The accomplishments have made Mitole an Eclipse Award finalist in three categories: Horse of the Year, champion older dirt male and champion male sprinter.

Mitole launched his memorable season this spring at Oaklawn Park, winning an allowance March 2 under regular rider Ricardo Santana Jr. and then the track’s Grade 3, $400,000 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap on April 13.

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

Mitole proceeded to become a Grade 1 winner in the Churchill Downs Stakes on May 4. He added another such win in his next start, when he defeated an all-star cast of opponents in the Metropolitan Handicap on June 8 at Belmont Park.

“For him to sustain the pressure of Coal Front and Promises Fulfilled and hold off McKinzie and Thunder Snow speaks for itself,” Mitole’s trainer, Steve Asmussen, told Daily Racing Form after the Met Mile.

Mitole hit Grade 1 paydirt again on Aug. 24, in the Forego at Saratoga Race Course. The start would serve as his final stepping-stone to the Breeders’ Cup. In the championship race, Mitole ran down pacesetter Shancelot and went on to 1 1/4-length win in a performance that earned him praise from runner-up Shancelot’s trainer, Jorge Navarro.

“I’m very proud of my horse,” Navarro told Daily Racing Form after the Breeders’ Cup. “We just got beat by Mitole. He’s the top sprinter in the country. In the world.”

The Heiligbrodts purchased Mitole for $140,000 as a 2-year-old in training at a 2017 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co. sale. Part of his appeal was that the Eskendereya colt is out of a daughter of Indian Charlie.

“Corinne marks horses in the catalog that have ties to Indian Charlie, just because those horses have always proven to me they’re fast and I’ve always wanted to go fast,” Bill Heiligbrodt told Daily Racing Form in July.

Corinne Heiligbrodt attached the name Mitole to the colt in a nod to the Karankawa Indians who once populated the Texas Gulf Coast region where both she and her husband were raised. The name also fit on pedigree for the son of the mare Indian Miss.

“We had kind of studied the history of the Karankawa, and it was interesting to us,” Bill Heiligbrodt said. “Those actual Indians became extinct before the Civil War because of disease. They lived off all the oysters and shrimp they could easily catch. The mitole was a ceremony they celebrated when they won a victory, or had some major good thing happen to them. That’s what they called it, a mitole.”

These days, the word mitole has another connotation – fast horse.