Brown caps best year with fifth Eclipse Award

Statistically, trainer Chad Brown may have had better years, but he called 2024 his best year yet.

Brown won his fifth Eclipse Award as champion trainer, narrowly defeating Kenny McPeek, 101 to 88. McPeek was the first trainer in 72 years to win the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby in the same year and he campaigned Horse of the Year Thorpedo Anna, the Oaks and Breeders’ Cup Distaff winner.

Brown, among other accomplishments, won 15 Grade 1 stakes with 12 individual horses. His $30,931,210 in purse money won led all trainers and was Brown’s third highest figure in his career. His 47 graded stakes led all trainers in 2024 and equaled his third best figure to date. Brown previously won the Eclipse Awards four straight years from 2016 to 2019 and now joins Todd Pletcher, who has won the award eight times, and Bobby Frankel, who also won five, as the only trainers to win more than four Eclipse Awards.

“There’s been other years where we’ve won more Grade 1s, there’s been a couple of years where we earned slightly more money, overall we’ve never had a better year,” Brown said. “With the eight Grade 1s on dirt, seven on turf, such a diverse group, had a huge Saratoga [meet] in my hometown, and a Breeders’ Cup Classic which we hadn’t won – the richest race in North America – all those things make it our best year.”

In his acceptance speech at Thursday’s award ceremony, Brown said “I finally beat Ken McPeek in a photo,” a nod to Sierra Leone losing the Kentucky Derby by a nose to Mystik Dan.

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