2021 Eclipse Awards: Brad Cox

Try to wrap your brain around the fact that after the 2017 racing season had ended, Brad Cox had amassed 20 graded stakes wins during a training career that began in 2004. In 2018, Cox equaled that career total with 20 graded wins. Talk about a meteoric rise. Cox won 30 graded races in 2020, landing his first Eclipse Award as North America’s leading trainer, and he went out and hit the same total again during 2021. Among his Grade 1 winners during the year was Knicks Go, who is likely to become the first Cox-trained Horse of the Year.

Cox, in fact, far exceeded his 2020 season in 2021, upping a career-best $19.9 million in annual earnings to a record-setting $31,001,731. He started more horses than ever before, 1,025; won more races, 269; and is a strong contender to take home his second straight Eclipse.

Cox won his first Triple Crown race, with Essential Quality in the Belmont Stakes, and guided Knicks Go through a remarkable campaign that began with victory in the Pegasus World Cup Invitational, included a trips to both Saudi Arabia (he lost) and Iowa (he won), and ended with a thundering triumph in the Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic.

:: Full list of 2021 Eclipse Awards finalists, including profile stories

Twenty graded-stakes wins his first 14 years, 96 in the five years since – and no sign of Brad Cox slowing down anytime soon.