There were 33 different 3-year-olds who ran in the three jewels of the 2016 Triple Crown. Collected was one of them, but the memory hardly lingered. He beat only one horse on a sloppy track in the Preakness at Pimlico, then went to the sidelines as a work in progress, hopefully to be reborn as a mature Thoroughbred ready to take on the toughest possible challenges.
Collected was up to the task.
From his brilliant start in Florida to his desultory farewell at Del Mar, Arrogate was the horse who dominated most of the racing headlines in 2017. He ran four times in his homeland and once, memorably, in Dubai, and each time he ran the game stood at attention, as if awaiting a celestial message borne by a true descendant of Pegasus himself.
From an unstarted maiden at the beginning of the year to a Grade 1 winner against elders in the Las Vegas Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, Battle of Midway had one of the most extensive and productive campaigns in racing in 2017.
Racing virtually once a month, Battle of Midway ran 10 times and won five, including three stakes, and also finished third in the Kentucky Derby and second in the Santa Anita Derby.
For the second straight year, a colt who skipped the Triple Crown but had a brilliant second half of the year including a victory in the Travers Stakes could prevail as champion 3-year-old male, as West Coast looks to emulate Arrogate from a year ago.
In a year when no 3-year-old male clearly stood above the others, Always Dreaming stakes his claim to the Eclipse Award by virtue of winning the one race everyone else would have loved to have won, the Kentucky Derby.
It was Always Dreaming who proved best on the first Saturday in May, culminating a four-race win streak to start the year that had him ready to be at his absolute best when it counted most. He won four times in seven starts on the year, and his two Grade 1 wins – in the Kentucky Derby and Florida Derby – tie him for the divisional lead in that department.
The partnership of Winchell Thoroughbreds and Three Chimneys Farm has campaigned just one horse, but since he’s Breeders’ Cup Classic winner and Horse of the Year finalist Gun Runner, the merger can only be considered a rousing success.
Gun Runner won five of six starts in 2017, earning $6,950,700. He alone made the Winchell-Three Chimneys partnership North America’s third-highest-earning owner when Dubai World Cup card starts are taken into account.
Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms has developed into a global superpower over the course of four decades, and he continued to compete at the very highest level in 2017 with Horse of the Year finalist Arrogate.
After a breakout campaign in 2016, Arrogate gathered no moss, winning the inaugural Pegasus World Cup, then traveling abroad to win the Dubai World Cup in the first few months of the year.
Arrogate finished his career as North America’s all-time leading earner with $17,422,600, and will enter stud at Juddmonte’s Lexington, Ky., farm in 2018.
Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum has a presence in nearly every corner of the global Thoroughbred industry, and his Godolphin Racing operation again was among North America’s best in 2017.
The ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed tallied 54 North American wins in 2017, and Godolphin’s combined earnings of $7,090,867 ranked him second in the North American owner standings.
Godolphin tied with Juddmonte Farms for the most overall graded stakes wins of 2017 (nine) and tied for second for Grade 1 wins (three).
Kenny Troutt’s WinStar Farm continues to be an industry leader on the racetrack and in the breeding shed, as evidenced by its third time as a finalist for the Eclipse Award as outstanding breeder.
The Versailles, Ky., farm was North America’s leading breeder by graded stakes wins in 2017 (nine) and tied with Clearsky Farms and Besilu Stables for the most Grade 1 wins (four). WinStar finished second among breeders by North American wins (207) and earnings ($9,101,819).
The past five years have produced breakthrough after breakthrough for the Cleary family’s Clearsky Farms, all from a broodmare band much smaller than most of its contemporaries’.
In 2013, the Lexington, Ky., farm was represented by Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner New Year’s Day. The following year, Clearsky consigned eventual Grade 2 winner Mohaymen as a yearling for a sale-topping $2.2 million at the Keeneland September auction and followed that up in 2015 with Kentucky Derby runner-up Firing Line.
