2020 Eclipse Awards: Zulu Alpha

Many high-level turf horses spend the first couple months of the year taking it easy. The heart of the grass-racing season, after all, comes in summer and fall, and many a turf campaign is plotted accordingly.

While racing schedules of that ilk were being hatched during the winter of 2020, Zulu Alpha was out doing work. Jan. 25, in the raceday medication-free Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational Stakes presented by Runhappy, Zulu Alpha ran one of the best races of his career coming from 10th at the halfway marker to win by two lengths. In second was the globe-trotting, high-class Irish filly Magic Wand and in third was Instilled Regard, who would win the Grade 1 Manhattan later in the year.

Zulu Alpha, a 7-year-old in 2020, long has been a horse that seems to thrive with racing. Mike Maker, who trained Zulu Alpha for Michael Hui, wheeled his charge back just more than a month later, and Zulu Alpha came away with a one-length win in the Grade 2 Mac Diarmida.

Just like that, with many of North America’s top turf horses barely gearing up for a first start of the year, Zulu Alpha had assembled the basis for an Eclipse Award candidacy.

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

Had he maintained that performance level – Zulu Alpha got a 107 Beyer Speed Figure in the Pegasus, a 106 in the Mac Diarmida, two of the better grass numbers all season – his credentials would look stronger. Instead, Zulu Alpha slipped slightly the rest of the year. He was beaten a neck at odds-on in the Pan American in late March, got time off, ground out a win in the Grade 2 Elkhorn at Keeneland in July, and finished third, not quite up to his peak, as an odds-on favorite in the Grade 3 Kentucky Turf Cup. Plans initially called for a start in the Longines Breeders’ Cup Turf, but Zulu Alpha couldn’t make the race.

None of which really diminishes Zulu Alpha’s standing. Horses claimed for $80,000 during their 5-year-old season might turn out to be stakes-quality, but rare – very rare – is such a horse good enough to get onto an Eclipse ballot. Zulu Alpha, bred by Calumet Farm through a mating of Street Cry and the A.P. Indy mare, Zori, knocked out Grade 1 wins in 2019 and 2020, and early last year, for a few months, he was the alpha and the omega of the American turf.