2020 Eclipse Awards: Order of Australia

Some organizations, when they make it to the top, become risk averse. With the power and wherewithal to control circumstances to a great extent, they prize the sure thing over taking chances that might, should they work, bring great reward.

Coolmore and trainer Aidan O’Brien are no such operation. O’Brien doesn’t hesitate trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, to poke and prod and experiment and see if he can make something difficult actually happen.

Which gets us to a horse name Order of Australia. This colt, a 3-year-old of 2020, came overseas with O’Brien’s Breeders’ Cup contingent while looking little like an actual Breeders’ Cup horse. His name made it onto the list for the FanDuel Breeders’ Cup Mile presented by PDJF, but Order of Australia, it seemed, wouldn’t make it into an oversubscribed field. He was entered in a Keeneland race, the Bryan Station, the day before the Mile and probably wouldn’t have been favored in that ungraded, age-restricted stakes.

Instead, defections opened a spot in the Mile. O’Brien scratched from the Friday race to take his chance on Saturday, upon which Order of Australia caused mass disorder.

Sent off at odds of 73-1 under Pierre-Charles Boudot, Order of Australia came home the second-longest price winner in the Breeders’ Cup history – behind only the legendary Arcangues in the 1993 Classic – as O’Brien-trained horses, Circus Maximus and Lope Y Fernandez, also finished second and third.

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

Order of Australia had to overcome post 14 to win the Mile, but Boudot put him right in the race, and Order of Australia did everything right, stalking the pace, taking over in midstretch, and holding on to win by a neck.

By Australia out of Senta’s Dream, by Danehill, Order of Australia had been held in high enough regard early in 2020 to get multiple chances in European classic races, finishing fourth in the Irish Derby and seventh in the Prix du Jockey-Club (French Derby). His two 2020 wins before capturing one of the world’s top grass races had come in an all-weather allowance race at Dundalk and in a 12-furlong allowance race over soft ground at The Curragh. That is not the résumé of a Breeders’ Cup Mile winner, but Order of Australia’s Mile shock gave him the résumé of an Eclipse Awards finalist in 2020.