2024 Eclipse Awards: Lake Victoria

Lake Victoria’s unbeaten season, in which she won three Grade/Group 1 races in three countries, has already earned her one championship, as she was named the Cartier Award outstanding 2-year-old filly in Europe. She goes for a second title as an Eclipse Award finalist in the 2-year-old filly division.

“I suppose you’d have to think she ranks very highly with some of our best fillies,” co-owner Michael Tabor of the Coolmore group, which campaigns Lake Victoria as a homebred, said last fall.

Lake Victoria, foaled in Ireland, is impeccably bred. She is by unbeaten two-time European Horse of the Year and prominent sire Frankel and out of Group 1 winner Quiet Reflection. Turned over to Coolmore trainer Aidan O’Brien at his Ballydoyle base, Lake Victoria signaled that she might be another nice one for the prominent stable early, when she won her debut going seven furlongs at The Curragh in late June, with Ryan Moore in the saddle.

Lake Victoria proceeded to win the Group 3 Sweet Solera Stakes at Newmarket by two lengths under Sean Levey, becoming Frankel’s milestone 100th graded/group stakes winner from less than 10 crops. She then won her Group 1 debut, swooping to a 1 1/4-length score in the Moyglare Stud Stakes at The Curragh with Wayne Lordan aboard.

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

Both of those outings came at seven furlongs. O’Brien took the unorthodox step of dropping Lake Victoria back to six furlongs for the Group 1 Cheveley Park Stakes at Newmarket less than two weeks later. Moore was back in the irons for the three-length win. The legendary jockey has been one of Lake Victoria’s biggest fans, and came back from that effort enthused about the filly’s ability to handle more ground in the future.

Heeding the leading rider’s belief and enthusiasm, Lake Victoria became part of the Ballydoyle raiding party for the Breeders’ Cup in early November at Del Mar, in which she would go a mile in the John Deere Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, running around left-handed bends.

The filly was unlucky at the draw, landing the rail in the full field of 14. Indeed, she and Moore found trouble early as she was in tight quarters on the inside, bumped, and pushed back as far as seventh. But she settled nicely off the pace on the inside, and when Moore found room to tip her out, she found full flight, sweeping to a 1 1/2-length win to finish off an unbeaten season.

“She’s very unusual,” Moore said after the victory, as a compliment.

“You couldn’t compare her with all the other horses,” Moore said. “As far as the 2-year-old fillies go, to do what she’s done is very unique.”

Lake Victoria, who became a millionaire with her Breeders’ Cup win, could continue her unusual accomplishments if she is voted the Eclipse Award champion. Since the Cartier Awards were launched in 1991, no filly has ever swept both the Cartier and the Eclipse in the same 2-year-old campaign. Only a pair of 2-year-old colts, Arazi (1991) and Johannesburg (2001), have won both a Cartier and Eclipse as youngsters, and both won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

After her winter break, Lake Victoria is considered the leading candidate for one of Europe’s spring classics, the English 1000 Guineas.

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