Media Eclipse Award winners announced
NBC Sports, the network that currently holds the television rights to the Triple Crown races and the two-day Breeders’ Cup event, won its 24th and 25th Eclipse Awards as the winner in both television categories for 2021, it was announced Thursday.
For the second year in a row, NBC Sports was named the Eclipse winner for Live Racing, this time for its live broadcast of the Saturday card of the Breeders’ Cup on Nov. 6 at Del Mar. It was the 17th time NBC Sports or its sister networks have been named the winner in the Live Racing category since it was inaugurated in 1999.
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In addition, NBC Sports was named the Eclipse winner for Feature Television for a piece on the ownership group behind the Kentucky Derby entrant Hot Rod Charlie that ran on April 30 on NBCSN. The focus of the piece was the five former college football teammates who own a part of the colt. NBC Sports or its sister networks have now won the Eclipse for Feature Television eight times.
Billy Matthew and Lindsay Schanzer were the producers of the Breeders’ Cup broadcast. The piece on Hot Rod Charlie was produced by Sam Flood, Rob Hyland, Jack Felling, David Picker, and Annie Koeblitz.
Eric Mitchell, a 21-year employee of The Blood-Horse and its bloodstock editor, won his first Eclipse Award, for news writing, with a piece that examined conditions on container ships that transport horses from the U.S. to Puerto Rico, along with the response of U.S. racetracks. The piece, called “Tracks Join Rallying Cry to End Cargo Shipping,” was published on Aug. 24 of last year.
Sandra McKee, a freelance writer who had a 36-year career at the Baltimore Evening Sun and Baltimore Sun, won her first Eclipse, for feature writing, for a piece that retold the story of Albert Adams, who set the world record for consecutive riding wins in 1930 as a 16-year-old apprentice. The piece ran in the Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred in June of last year.
Matthew Taylor, a producer at Atttheraces.com, a British-based website, and Peter Fornatale, a journalist, author, and podcast host, were named the Eclipse winners for Audio/Multimedia Internet, for a collaboration that stitched together interviews with 17 racing personalities on their recollections of the Breeders’ Cup event, which has been run consecutively since 1984.
Jeff Faughender, an employee with the Louisville Courier-Journal for the past 22 years, won his first Eclipse, for photography, for a shot from the rooftop of Churchill Downs just after the start of last year’s Kentucky Derby. The picture, published in the Courier-Journal, captured the entire field of the Derby between the elongated shadows cast by the track’s twin spires.