2024 Eclipse Awards: Fierceness

Down, up, way down, up again, way up, up again but not quite high enough. Picture Fierceness’s 3-year-old campaign as a bar graph and your eyeballs take a ride on a roller-coaster.

At the end of the line, Fierceness stands as one of the top North American 3-year-olds of 2024, among the best dirt-route horses in the world, and a finalist for a second Eclipse Award, the chance to follow his 2-year-old championship season with another as a 3-year-old.

It feels now like it was meant to be. At other points, it felt like Fierceness might go quiet as a lamb through his sophomore campaign.

That began as the 1-5 favorite in the Grade 3 Holy Bull Stakes. Fierceness got bounced around at the start, recovered, tracked a slow pace, and had nothing for the finish, checking in third.

A shocking defeat, yes, but Fierceness had thrown a similar dud the previous fall in the Champagne Stakes. He erased that stain, romping in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, and his 13 1/2-length tour de force victory in the Grade 1 Curlin Florida Derby in March put Fierceness back on firmer footing – or so many assumed.

Actually, physically, to see the colt spend an apathetic, listless week in Louisville training for the Woodford Reserve Kentucky Derby, it was evident the Florida Derby had sapped Fierceness. His trip as the Derby favorite wound up far from ideal, but Fierceness’s 15th-place finish, coupled with his Holy Bull, left his 3-year-old campaign in limbo.

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

Here, credit and congratulations accrue to trainer Todd Pletcher and his team at Saratoga, where Fierceness, done with the Triple Crown, went to lick wounds and regain vigor. Could he? He could.

Returning from a layoff of nearly three months, and not favored for the first time as a 3-year-old, Fierceness stepped into the starting gate for the Grade 2 Jim Dandy Stakes looking out at a career crossroads. Who was this horse? The 2-year-old champ, the beast who earned an off-the-charts 110 Beyer Speed Figure in the Florida Derby? Or the vulnerable colt of the Holy Bull, the Kentucky Derby, and the Champagne?

Fierceness did not show his very best in the Jim Dandy, but he showed enough of it to win, defeating favored Sierra Leone by one length.

All well and good, yet the Jim Dandy proved only that Fierceness had bounced back to his better self. Widely held, the presumption had Pletcher and owner-breeder Mike Repole giving Fierceness a lengthy breather into his next start to avoid the physical regression that undid his Derby. Pletcher said he’d take things day by day, and day after day, through jogs, gallops, and works, Fierceness held his form. You could see it, even on video from afar: Fierceness was ready for more.

More he gave in the Grade 1 DraftKings Travers Stakes. He was confronted after taking a two-length lead to the stretch call by the fabulous filly Thorpedo Anna, getting five pounds from her male rival. Thorpedo Anna, favored to be named Horse of the Year, churned relentlessly and fell a head short. Not the Derby, not a Triple Crown race at all, but redemption for Fierceness.

Thus, his true mettle and worth nearly cemented, Fierceness came fresh into the Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic, where he chased Derma Sotogake through a 44.96-second half-mile that left the pacesetter gasping at the three-eighths pole. Fierceness stayed on. His old rival Sierra Leone got the dream setup this time, rolling from the rear of the field, storming to victory behind the crazy-fast pace.

This defeat didn’t feel like the others. A loss, but a validation – the Holy Bull, the Derby, the Champagne, all laid to rest.

A son of City of Light, Fierceness will campaign as a 4-year-old in 2025.

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