The dark-haired woman in the long black dress stood in a bright light brandishing a whip, a leather muzzle, and soft-cloth restraints. Arrayed before her in the dimly lit ballroom, her audience braced for the strict punishments implied for careless disobedience. They mumbled in meek compliance and stared at the clock. Soon it would be their turn to obey.
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DRF Past Performances
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Justify went away with the most impressive hardware, but it was Joe Harper, Sarai and Irad Ortiz Jr., and Weston Hamilton who made the biggest impressions at the 48th annual Eclipse Awards dinner Thursday night at Gulfstream Park.
Justify, the 2018 Triple Crown winner, was named Horse of the Year and was a unanimous choice for champion 3-year-old male. He received 191 first-place votes for Horse of the Year to 54 for runner-up Accelerate, who won a divisional title as champion older male on dirt.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – His six-race career may have lasted a little less than four months, but on Thursday night, more than seven months after he swept the Triple Crown, Justify provided a final reminder of his brief, brilliant career. He added two victories to his unbeaten record when he was named both Horse of the Year and champion 3-year-old male at the 48th annual Eclipse Awards dinner at Gulfstream Park.
Do something well and do it long enough – say, 40 years or so – and someone’s bound to notice. Joe Harper, the wryly smiling face of Del Mar since 1978, finally gets to step out from behind all that distracting sunshine and sea air on Thursday night when he will become the 44th winner of the Eclipse Award of Merit.
There have been five Triple Crown winners since the Eclipse Awards were inaugurated in 1971, and the previous four – Secretariat, Seattle Slew, Affirmed, and American Pharoah – all were named Horse of the Year. Justify, last year’s Triple Crown winner, is favored to keep that streak intact on Thursday night when racing’s 2018 champions are announced at the 48th annual Eclipse Awards dinner at Gulfstream Park.
Google the name “Michael Abraham” and you are likely to come up with:
Michael Abraham, Chicago area architect, who designs “high-end residential spaces that look to the past but are decidedly contemporary.” At least, that’s what the brochure says.
Then there is Michael Abraham – Dr. Abraham to you – an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Kansas Medical Center, where he specializes in procedures like aneurysm coiling, intra-arterial stroke treatment, and tumor embolization. Yeah, he’s a brain surgeon.
After pulling off one surprise in a Grade 1 race and nearly pulling off another, it was no surprise that Knicks Go is a finalist for the Eclipse Award for champion 2-year-old male.
Knicks Go, a son of Paynter owned by the Korean Racing Authority, gave trainer Ben Colebrook and jockey Albin Jimenez their first Grade 1 victory when he scored by 5 1/2 lengths as the 70-1 rank outsider in a 13-horse field in the Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland in October.
As training hours wound down on the morning of Feb. 18 at Santa Anita, Bob Baffert was asked about a first-time starter by Scat Daddy who was to make his debut that afternoon.
“I’ve got big plans for that colt,” he said.
A few hours later, Justify burst onto the scene, and though his career lasted only five more starts over the next 111 days, what he accomplished in that time was remarkable.
“You’ll never see another horse like this,” Baffert said while admiring Justify in his stall at Pimlico the morning after the Preakness.
It is unusual in this age of specialization to find a 3-year-old as effective in top-class company on dirt as on turf, but Catholic Boy proved himself that rare commodity, winning Grade 1 races on both those surfaces during a 2018 campaign in which he fashioned a terrific second act after failing to make the spring classics.