Led by multiple Eclipse Award winner Royal Delta, appearing on the ballot in her first year of eligibility, and Rags to Riches, one of only three fillies to win the Belmont Stakes, a total of nine individuals – five horses, three trainers, and one jockey – were announced on Thursday as the finalists who will appear this year’s ballot for the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. The other horses are Blind Luck, Gio Ponti, and Havre de Grace, all of whom were on last year’s ballot. The trainers are Mark Casse and David Whiteley – who also were on last year’s ballot – and ballot newcomer Christophe Clement. The only jockey is Craig Perret, who also was on last year’s ballot. Those who were on the ballot last year, but are not finalists this year, are jockeys Robby Albarado and Corey Nakatani, and trainer John Shirreffs. There were 10 finalists on last year’s ballot, but the only individual who received enough votes to be enshrined was the filly Heavenly Prize. The outcome was surprising, as the Hall of Fame last year changed its rules – which are still in place this year -- to allow any candidate who receives support from more than 50 percent of the voters to get in. In prior years, even though voters could choose as many candidates as they felt worthy, only the four who received the most votes could get in, meaning that anyone who received support from more than 50 percent of the voters, but did not finish in the top four, was denied entry. The current system makes it a straight up-or-down vote for all finalists. The Hall of Fame does not release vote totals. The finalists were chosen by a 16-member Nominating Committee, which reviewed 93 submitted candidates. To make the ballot, a candidate had to receive support from at least 11 (more than two-thirds) of the Nominating Committee members. Ballots are scheduled to go out to voters on March 1, and the inductees will be announced on April 22. Also on April 22, the Hall of Fame will announce inductees chosen by the Historical Review Committee – the sport’s oldtimer’s division -- as well as this year’s Pillars of the Turf. The induction ceremonies are Aug. 2 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where the Hall of Fame is located. Royal Delta, now on the ballot as more than five years have elapsed since her retirement, is the first of several dynamic female candidates who will come on the ballot in upcoming years, including Beholder, Songbird, and Tepin. She should be a slam dunk for inclusion. Royal Delta, trained by Bill Mott, won Eclipse Awards at ages 3, 4, and 5, and won consecutive runnings of both the Breeders’ Cup Ladies' Classic (nee Distaff) in 2011-12 and the Beldame. She won 12 of 22 starts, including six Grade 1 races. Rags to Riches became the first filly in more than 100 years to win the Belmont when she memorably fought off Hall of Famer Curlin in 2007. That was her fourth straight Grade 1 victory, all at age 3, that also included the Kentucky Oaks. She won five times in seven starts while primarily trained by Todd Pletcher, though she ran in the name of Pletcher’s assistant at the time, Michael McCarthy, for two of her wins – against maidens and in the Las Virgenes -- while Pletcher was serving a suspension. Blind Luck won the 2010 Kentucky Oaks and 11 other races, including six Grade 1 races, during a 22-race career that saw her win Grade 1 races at ages 2, 3, and 4. She was the champion 3-year-old filly of 2010, when she also captured the Las Virgenes and Alabama. She had memorable battles with fellow nominee Havre de Grace, including losing by a neck in the 2010 Cotillion but prevailing by nose in the 2011 Delaware Handicap. She was trained by Hall of Famer Jerry Hollendorfer. Havre de Grace was the Horse of the Year and champion older female of 2011, the year she won three Grade 1 races, most notably the Woodward against males. She was trained at ages 2 and 3 by Tony Dutrow, for whom she won the Cotillion, before being transferred by owner Rick Porter to Larry Jones. She won nine times in 16 starts. Gio Ponti was a three-time Eclipse Award winner who captured seven Grade 1 grass races, including four straight in 2009, the year he was named both champion male turf horse and champion older male. He finished second to Zenyatta in that year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic, run on a synthetic surface at Santa Anita. He won 12 times in 29 starts and was second in 10 other races while racing for five seasons and earning more than $6 million, all under the care of fellow finalist Clement. In addition to Gio Ponti, Clement, 53, has trained the likes of Tonalist, who won the 2014 Belmont as well as consecutive runnings of the Jockey Club Gold Cup. Clement has won 1,906 races – entering Thursday’s action -- including many notable Grade 1 grass races across the country, such as the Man o’ War, Manhattan, Diana, Shadwell Mile, Beverly D., and Del Mar Oaks. Casse, 58, like Clement is still in the prime of his career. He has won 2,645 races and has trained champions in both the United States and Canada, most notably Tepin, who won the 2016 Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot and the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Mile, one of five Breeders’ Cup races Casse has won. His most recent champion is the 2018 Eclipse Award-winning female sprinter, Shamrock Rose. Casse has won the Sovereign Award as champion trainer in Canada a record 10 times, and in 2016 he was inducted in the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame. Whiteley, who died in 2017 at age 73, emphasized quality over quantity. His best runners included Eclipse Award-winning females Just a Game, Revidere, and Waya, and he won the 1979 Belmont with Coastal, denying Spectacular Bid the Triple Crown. He retired in 1995 with 678 victories. His late father, trainer Frank Jr., is in the Hall of Fame. Perret, 68, retired in 2005 with 4,415 wins, most notably aboard Unbridled in the Kentucky Derby in 1990, the year Perret won the Eclipse Award as champion jockey. He also rode Bet Twice when he stopped Alysheba’s Triple Crown bid in the 1987 Belmont, and won four Breeders’ Cup races, including the Sprint aboard the Hall of Fame filly Safely Kept. He was the leading money-winning apprentice in 1967, before the advent of the Eclipse Awards.