Eclipse Award votes reveal outliers who go against the tide

As contentious as they seem each winter, the Eclipse Awards are seldom close calls. It has been 48 years since Dr. Patches and J.O. Tobin shared honors as the top sprinter, the rare tie in more than a half-century of the annual U.S. and Canada championships.

More conspicuous and frequent are the unusual votes, the ones that might prevent a victory from being unanimous.

Flashback: Sovereignty is horse of year at Eclipse Awards show.

Two months after the awards were presented in Palm Beach, Fla., exceptional opinions were revealed Friday. That was when the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters posted a spreadsheet of their first-place selections for 2025. Made up of racing media, track personalities and publicists, the NTWAB accounted for 139 of the 220 votes. The rest came from Daily Racing Form staff and National Thoroughbred Racing Association constituents, neither of which divulges its votes or who its voters are.

Sovereignty, who was chosen as horse of the year on all but 19 ballots, also was the champion 3-year-old male. It was almost unanimous. Because she abstained, Andie Biancone of FanDuel TV was the lone exception.

“Magnitude was in there (as a potential contender), and I felt it was a conflict of interest,” said Biancone, who is paid to ride the newly christened winner of the Grade 1 Dubai World Cup during morning track work.

Voters must fill out all 17 categories with first-, second- and third-place choices on their ballots. They are not allowed to leave categories blank without at least marking abstentions. The NTWAB did not reveal second- and third-place votes, which do not count unless there are ties.

Undefeated, three-time Grade 1 winner Ted Noffey came within two votes of being the unanimous victor as the top 2-year-old male. Ken Snyder chose Gstaad, a 6: 3-3-0 colt from Europe who won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf in his only North America start. Snyder also had the lone votes for Hope Road for older dirt female, Positano Sunset for female sprinter and Carl Spackler for turf male.

Snyder admitted in a Sunday text message to Horse Racing Nation that he hurried through his picks as the Jan. 1 balloting deadline loomed.

“Getting my selections wound up being a last-minute rush operation due to a work crunch as well as grad-school assignments,” said Snyder, a Kentucky free-lance writer and author who became an NTWAB voter in 2024. “I had no idea you could pass on the voting or (abstain) in categories where you didn’t know what you were doing. I made a mess of the thing in a hurry this year, not knowing my selections would go public. Providing I’m not kicked out of the NTWAB, I may not vote ever again. In no way do I want to disrespect the Eclipse process. In the future, if I don’t have time to do the thing, I won’t.”

As harsh as his self-critique was, at least Snyder took responsibility. Further Ado, whose Kentucky Jockey Club (G2) victory was the highlight of a 2-for-4 year, got the other juvenile-male first-place vote that did not go to Ted Noffey. It came from either DRF or the NTRA, so who cast it was not and might never be known.

Ted Black, a longtime racing writer for the Spirit of Jefferson newspaper in Charles Town, W.Va., might have had the most unusual NTWAB ballot. He was alone in choosing Clicquot for 3-year-old filly, Excellent Truth for turf female and Henry Walters for top trainer. He also was one of two people who voted for Zany in the 2-year-old filly category.

Confessing in an email Sunday night that he “voted back in December, so not sure what I remember,” Black still channeled reasons for his opinions.

Of Zany, who lost to Super Corredora, he said, “Late start to her season, but she won a maiden special weight and then took the Demoiselle (G2) at Aqueduct in very sharp fashion. ... Her career began after the Breeders’ Cup, so she flew below the radar.”

About Clicquot in the category Nitrogen won, Black said, “Really was coming into her own late last summer, and she gave a decent account of herself against older rivals in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff.”

Of Excellent Truth in the wake of She Feels Pretty’s championship, he said, “Nice win at Saratoga. Nothing after that that I can recall.”

And in the trainer category won by Bill Mott over closest runners-up Brad Cox and Chad Brown, why did Black vote for Henry Walters, a Maryland trainer who never has won a graded stakes in 46 years of work?

“Walters has a very small stable of inexpensive horses,” he said. “His top trainee, Barbadian Runner, won numerous stakes, ended the trainer’s 20-year drought in those events and was a modest $5,000 purchase. ... He won eight races from 71 starters, but his horses made $800,000, which is fairly remarkable for a small barn. He did not run a horse in the Derby or Breeders’ Cup, so not many voters would even know he existed.”

There were other minority opinions that were not unique, including some that were cast by Horse Racing Nation voters. Ed DeRosa and Chip Gehrke, for example, were among the 19 who did not make Sovereignty their horse-of-the-year choice. They voted for Forever Young, as did 15 others.

Of the nine NTWAB voters who work as racetrack personalities or industry publicists, six cast their ballots for at least one horse or human who competed where they work. Alicia Hughes from the Ocala Breeders’ Sales and Peter Lurie of Fairmount Park did not. Votes turned in by Tim Wilkin, who did free-lance publicity last year for the Preakness, Kentucky Downs and the Breeders’ Cup, did not show up on the spreadsheet. According to Wilkin, he was told by NTWAB president Byron King that it was inadvertent and that his ballot was counted.

There have been past instances of voters making protests or other statements with their non-conformist opinions. Some have been very public about it. There probably were countless others who did not do their homework and went unnoticed. At least Snyder admitted it.

“I stepped in it,” he said, “and apologize to one and all for being an idiot.”