2020 Eclipse Awards: Brad Cox

Ninety-four starters, 30 winners for a 31 percent strike rate. Those are great numbers for a trainer at any level and even over a relatively short stretch of time. Now, try to imagine those stats cover only graded stakes races during a full calendar year and you’ll see just what kind of 2020 Brad Cox put together.

Cox has been rising inexorably through the national training ranks every year – now he has hit the top. The 30 graded wins were 10 more than his previous season’s best in 2018, and he hit a career high with a little less than $19 million in stable earnings. Cox was second in North America among trainers ranked by earnings, sixth in wins with 216, and second in graded stakes wins, two behind Chad Brown.

Cox won the Longines Kentucky Oaks with Shedaresthedevil, yet that success paled in comparison to Cox’s performance at the 2020 Breeders’ Cup. On Breeders’ Cup Friday, Cox won the TVG Juvenile presented by the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance with Essential Quality, the strong favorite to be champion 2-year-old, and the Juvenile Fillies Turf with Aunt Pearl. On Breeders’ Cup Saturday, Monomoy Girl, a likely Eclipse winner as older dirt female, won her second Longines Distaff and Knicks Go ran his Big Ass Fans Dirt Mile opponents ragged in a brilliant display of speed.

:: Full list of 2020 Eclipse Awards finalists, including profile stories

Four Breeders’ Cup wins, and a Kentucky Oaks. Cox, growing up in Louisville down the street from Churchill Downs, long dreamed of becoming a trainer, but even his wildest dreams might not have reached these heights.