2023 Eclipse Awards: Mawj

A wildly successful three-continent campaign in 2023 left the young filly Mawj as a finalist for the Eclipse Award as the outstanding turf female as well as champion 3-year-old filly of 2023.

Mawj was only a nose away from a perfect five-race season through the year. In the end, the only runner to beat her was a stablemate also owned and bred by Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin Racing.

Mawj’s loss was arguably her finest performance, a nose defeat to Master of The Seas in the FanDuel Breeders’ Cup Mile at Santa Anita on Nov. 4. Always within a few lengths of the front, Mawj opened a one-length lead in the stretch. She seemed poised to beat males only for late-running Master of The Seas to grab the win at the wire.

“The only filly in the race, she ran fantastically,” Hugh Anderson of Godolphin said after the race.

:: Full list of 2023 Eclipse Awards finalists, including profile stories

Trained by Saeed bin Suroor, Mawj was raced sparingly from late January to early November at four of the most important racecourses in the world.

By the Danehill stallion Exceed and Excel, Mawj began the year with wins in two rich allowance races on turf for 3-year-olds fillies at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai – the Jumeirah Fillies Classic at about seven furlongs in late January and the Jumeirah Fillies Guineas at a mile in late February.

Typical of many leading Godolphin/bin Suroor runners, Mawj was sent to Britain in early spring and had her 2023 European debut in the Group 1 English 1000 Guineas on a straightaway mile course at Newmarket.

Dismissed at 9-1, Mawj took the lead with a quarter-mile remaining and held off favored Tahiyra to win by a half-length. Mawj gave bin Suroor his first win in a British classic since 2009.

Mawj beat a brilliant rival. Tahiyra won Group 1 races in her next three starts through early September.

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Mawj, meanwhile, stayed in the barn for the rest of the spring and summer, and not by design. She was an intended runner for the Group 1 Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot in June until she was sidelined by a cough.

Mawj did not race again in Europe in 2023. She returned to action for the first time since the 1000 Guineas in the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup for 3-year-old fillies at 1 1/8 miles on turf at Keeneland in October. Sent off as the 6-5 favorite in a field of nine, Mawj was bin Suroor’s first American runner since 2019.

In the $600,000 Queen Elizabeth Challenge Cup, Mawj took the lead under jockey Oisin Murphy and won by a half-length, giving the then 56-year-old bin Suroor the 500th group or graded stakes win of his career.

In the days after the Breeders’ Cup, Godolphin announced that Mawj will spend this winter in Dubai, delightful news for racing fans who found her an easy filly to admire throughout the world in 2023.

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