2024 Eclipse Awards: Carl Spackler

Not to get too dramatic about it, but anytime a case of colic becomes so severe as to require surgery, a horse is in danger of dying. Carl Spackler didn’t just make it through colic surgery in fall 2023 and recover, he made it back to the races and recovered his best form – and then some.

Four wins from six starts, two Grade 1s in which he beat FanDuel Breeders’ Cup Mile winner More Than Looks, and Carl Spackler put together a 2024 campaign worthy of Eclipse Award consideration.

Credit farm trainer Ian Brennan and then racetrack trainer Chad Brown for easing Carl Spackler back into the daily regimen required of an elite equine athlete – and the horse for having the constitution that permitted his talent to shine again.

That talent came clear from Carl Spackler’s first start, a Gulfstream maiden turf route where he came out on the wrong side of a tight finish with Far Bridge – winner of two Grade 1s himself during 2024, and not far from being an Eclipse finalist.

Bred in Ireland by Bob Edwards’s Fifth Avenue Bloodstock, Carl Spackler is by Lope de Vega and out of Zindaya, and is trained by Brown for Edwards’s eFive Racing Thoroughbreds. Edwards entered the colt to be sold as a yearling in England, but the horse who would be named after Bill Murray’s wacked-out greenskeeper in the golf movie “Caddyshack” failed to meet his reserve.

:: Full list of 2024 Eclipse Awards finalists, including profile stories

Back racing this past spring, Carl Spackler narrowly captured the Opening Verse at Churchill Downs in May, a solid comeback race followed by a shakier fifth in the Grade 3 Poker Stakes. Then, Brown got Carl Spackler as right as the horse could be. He won the Grade 3 Kelso and subsequently notched the two victories catapulting him toward the top of his division. First was a 3 1/2-length triumph – the best race of his life – over More Than Looks in the Grade 1 FanDuel Fourstardave Handicap at Saratoga. At Keeneland, in the Grade 1 Coolmore Turf Mile, jockey Tyler Gaffalione deployed Carl Spackler’s rateable speed to great advantage, getting the jump on More Than Looks, whose furious finish came too late.

Drawn wide in the Breeders’ Cup Mile, Carl Spackler failed to hit another peak. That he returned to a level so high at all is a testament to the horse and the people around him.

Carl Spackler has remained in training as a 5-year-old in 2025.

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