Irad Ortiz Jr. had a year to remember in 2015. His mounts earned $23,546,727 to place him second among all riders in North America. Ortiz also won his first Saratoga title, captured the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf aboard Stephanie’s Kitten, and won the Grade 1 Belmont Oaks Invitational with his flagship mount, Lady Eli.
For that run of success, Ortiz is an Eclipse Award finalist for outstanding jockey of 2015.
It’s hard to cast a shadow over Dortmund. The big, beautiful, chestnut-colored colt towers physically over his rivals. In 2015, though, he was the understudy in the Bob Baffert barn to fellow 3-year-old American Pharoah, the Triple Crown winner and the obvious favorite to be named champion 3-year-old male. Yet Dortmund accomplished so much during the year that he was deserving of a top-three placing in this division, and thus a finalist.
Victor Espinoza went where no rider had gone in 37 years in 2015, winning the Triple Crown with American Pharoah. For a grand finale to their historic season, the pair tacked on a win in the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic.
Espinoza’s unforgettable year on the track has led to his being named an Eclipse Award finalist for outstanding jockey.
American Pharoah had a campaign for the ages in 2015, becoming the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years and going out an emphatic winner when facing elders for the first time in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Though there are other finalists for Eclipse Awards for 3-year-old male and Horse of the Year, we all know that’s just background noise. Tonight is his night, and deservedly so.
Javier Castellano trumped his high standards in 2015 when he broke his own single-season record for mount earnings in North America. The feat was achieved during a year in which Castellano also won 17 Grade 1 stakes aboard such horses as Honor Code, Liam’s Map, Stopchargingmaria, and Keen Ice.
For his accomplishments, Castellano, 38, is a finalist for the Eclipse Award for outstanding jockey. He has won the Eclipse twice before, in 2013 and 2014.
As we all know, fillies rarely target the Kentucky Derby, and when one does, it’s newsworthy. So, when the connections of a 2-year-old filly announce in December that their charge will pass on the Derby and it makes real news, well, that speaks volumes as to how special that filly must be.
The story surrounding Rachel’s Valentina is so incredible that it borders on sensory overload: Rachel’s Valentina is “merely” a daughter of 2009 Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra, who became the first filly in 85 years to win the Preakness Stakes, and is by a champion in Bernardini, the Eclipse Award-winning 3-year-old male of 2006 and also a winner of the Preakness, among other races.
Whether it is an illustration of an evolving philosophy amongst the Eclipse Award electorate or random results from a small sample size, one thing still seems clear: The door to the 2-year-old filly championship, once considered the indisputable property of dirt performers, is more open than it ever has been before to a turf specialist.
Training careers rarely follow a continuously upward trajectory when charted on a graph. Injuries and retirements of top horses, among other factors, can cause a trainer’s earnings to fall from one year to the next.
Chad Brown just happens to be the exception to the rule. In 2015, he continued his remarkable string of ascending yearly earnings since he began training in 2007, with his stable surpassing $20.2 million in purse money won in North America, second only to Todd Pletcher’s $26.2 million.
Bob Baffert wasn’t statistically the top trainer of 2015, but no one could argue that he wasn’t at the summit of his profession historically.
For the first time in 37 years, following Affirmed in 1978, a horse won the Triple Crown – American Pharoah – and it was Baffert who trained him to that elusive trio of victories as well as to a Breeders’ Cup Classic triumph at the end of 2015.
