Stellar Wind had much to live up to in 2016, with limited opportunities.
She got a late start to her campaign, raced just four times, but accomplished enough to be an Eclipse Award finalist as older dirt female, following a 2015 campaign in which she was named champion 3-year-old filly.
Stellar Wind’s 2016 campaign did not begin until June, which was part of a grand plan by trainer John Sadler and Hronis Racing, owned by brothers Kosta and Pete Hronis.
Beholder carried a lot of history into 2016 – she had campaigned four years already, earned three championships, won nine Grade 1s including two Breeders’ Cups, and had won 15 of 20 starts while earning more than $4 million.
On the racetrack, what more could she accomplish?
That was the challenge for trainer Richard Mandella and jockey Gary Stevens after owner B. Wayne Hughes chose to race Beholder one final season in 2016, at age 6. Was it the right decision? What if she lost a step?
Maryland horsemen steadily named Kevin Gomez on their horses throughout 2016, and his accomplishments have made him a finalist for the Eclipse Award as leading apprentice rider.
Gomez is the son of jockey Oscar Gomez, who rode in Guatemala before moving to the United States. Oscar Gomez began riding at the New York Racing Association tracks in 2000, and since 2009 has been a mainstay at Finger Lakes.
Kevin Gomez, 22, emigrated from Guatemala in 2007 to be near his father.
Haveyougoneaway began her 2016 campaign by winning a pair of ungraded sprint stakes at Oaklawn Park. They were solid efforts, but little did anyone suspect that the 5-year-old mare would go on to become a divisional finalist for an Eclipse Award.
By late summer, however, under new silks and in a new barn, Haveyougoneaway was the unofficial leader of the female sprint division by virtue of winning the Grade 1 Ballerina Stakes on the Aug. 27 Travers undercard at Saratoga.
As the 2016 Breeders’ Cup approached, Finest City was barely on the radar screen for a divisional Eclipse Award. But one sensational run changed all that.
By winning the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint on Nov. 5 at her home track of Santa Anita, Finest City became an Eclipse finalist in the female sprint division.
It’s difficult to find more superlatives to describe Songbird, the heavy favorite to earn her second career Eclipse Award. The filly has already run through most standard descriptors. She belted high note after high note in 2016, taking an unchallenged record into her showdown with two older champions in the 2016 Longines Breeders’ Cup Distaff.
“She’s run a lot of people out of her stall, I can tell you that,” trainer John Servis said of Cathryn Sophia. But luckily, the diminutive bay filly put her fighting spirit to good use on the racetrack, taking down one of her division’s signature events to stamp herself as an Eclipse Award finalist.
