2021 Eclipse Awards: Yibir

Godolphin and trainer Charlie Appleby had two of the best middle-distance 3-year-olds that raced in Europe during 2021. Adayar won the Epsom Derby and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, while Hurricane Lane won the St. Leger Stakes and beat Adayar in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, where he was third.

Yet before all these races were run, it was another of their homebreds, Yibir, regarded as the top 3-year-old prospect at Moulton Paddocks, Appleby’s training yard in England. Yibir appeared to possess top-level ability; his issue was expressing it out on the racecourse. Yibir was third and fourth in two early-season Classic trials, then ran a well-beaten second in a minor race at Goodwood, after which connections decided to take a young colt’s powerful hormonal surges out of the equation.

Yibir, and English-bred son of Dubawi out of the Monsun mare Rumh, was gelded and then nicely won the Group 3 Bahrain Trophy Stakes in July, but bad habits surfaced again in his next start, the Gordon Stakes in late July at Goodwood, where Yibir was more intent on fighting for his head than trying to win a horse race.

In the end, Appleby figured out a way to mold that raw talent. The Group 2 Great Voltigeur Stakes in August at York saw Yibir make a breakthrough, the gelding this time rating at the rear of the field under James Doyle before unleashing a wicked burst to win the 1 1/2-mile contest going away. York has a very long homestretch but otherwise bears some resemblance to American racecourses – left-handed turns, relatively few undulations – and Godolphin put Yibir on a plane to New York, where he tallied nicely in the Jockey Club Derby Invitational, a $1 million race as yet ungraded.

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

Godolphin and Appleby also brought Grade 1 Pattison Canadian International winner Walton Street to Del Mar for the Longines Breeders’ Cup Turf, but anyone who bothered to heed Appleby’s public comments leading up to the race knew which one of the pair was better fancied. It was a nice story that 7-year-old Walton Street had made the race, the trainer suggested, but Yibir was in California with a purpose. That became starkly evident at about the three-furlong pole on the Del Mar grass course, where Yibir and jockey William Buick, coming from 13th, were circling the field. Generally speaking, losing significant ground on the turn of a grass race is a poor idea; here, it mattered not. Yibir, his in-season transformation complete, was home by a neck, another Breeders’ Cup winner for Godolphin and Appleby – and a finalist for an Eclipse Award.