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The near-perfect campaign by Zenyatta in 2010 was enough for her to merit the title as Horse of the Year.
Consider the status of Zenyatta and her leading rival Blame as they entered the starting gate for the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs on Nov. 6.
Another year of Zenyatta, another debate over Horse of the Year. What else is new? I get that there isn’t a set criteria that a voter has to abide by. I also get that with our horses making fewer and fewer starts throughout the year that some amount of thinking may have to occur "outside the box." I guess that accounts for the extra credit I keep hearing about, which can be earned for getting spots on mainstream TV channels. Yet I still don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Didn’t get it last year; don’t get it this year.
I’m voting for Blame.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fervent admirer of Zenyatta and I’ve never rooted so hard for a horse to get up in the stretch as I did for her in the Classic, even though I had no financial stake since Dakota Phone had long since turned my pick-four tickets to confetti.
But Zenyatta didn’t get there despite a relatively clean trip with no loss of ground or momentum. She had dead aim, but Blame held her off fair and square.
Consistency is a valuable commodity in race horses, and Rightly So has been consistent from the beginning of her career, through all of her races in 2010.
She finished a close second, beaten by a half-length when she debuted against New York-breds as a 4-year-old in January of 2009. That was her only defeat that year. Racing exclusively against New York-breds, she crushed maiden specials by 10 lengths in her next race, then was the easy 5 3/4 length winner of an allowance race.
Richard’s Kid’s 2010 campaign began with a change of colors and ended with a familiar sight, the horse in full homestretch flight, on his way to a major Southern California stakes victory.
That season finale came in the Grade 1 Goodwood Handicap on Oct. 2, giving Richard’s Kid three graded stakes victories during the year – including two Grade 1’s – and a spot on the roster of Eclipse Award finalists.
FOREST BOYCE
For most of the first half of 2010, Maryland-based Forest Boyce was having what might be considered an ordinary year, one very much typical for an apprentice jockey, riding a few horses a day and winning at about a 12 percent rate.
Regardless of who wins the Eclipse Award as the top sprinter in 2010, only one horse has bragging rights as the only member of the division to win two Grade 1 races during the course of the season. That honor belonged to Smiling Tiger, a 3-year-old son of Hold That Tiger owned by Alan Klein and Phil Lebherz and trained by Jeff Bonde.
