The 3-year-old filly Thorpedo Anna won the 2024 Eclipse Award for Horse of the Year on Thursday, becoming the first female horse to do so since Havre de Grace in 2011.
Thorpedo Anna, whose only loss last season was a close second to Fierceness against males in the Travers at Saratoga Race Course, also won the Eclipse Award for Three-Year-Old Filly.
Trained by Kenny McPeek and ridden by Brian Hernandez, Jr., Thorpedo Anna won five Grade I stakes, the Kentucky Oaks, Acorn, Coaching Club American Oaks, Cotillion and the Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Del Mar. The Acorn and CCA Oaks were run at Saratoga.
“It’s been a fantastic ride, and it’s only started … she’s going to keep running,” McPeek said on the FanDuel TV broadcast of the 54th Eclipse Awards from The Breakers Palm Beach in Florida.
Voters made selections in each category on a 10-5-1 points scale for first, second and third, respectively, to determine finalists, but only the number of first-place votes were counted to determine winners in each category. Of the 240 eligible voters, 208 (87%) returned ballots.
Thorpedo Anna received all 208 first-place votes for Three-Year-Old Filly and 193 for Horse of the Year. The other finalists for Horse of the Year were Sierra Leone (10 first-place votes) and Fierceness (5).
McPeek, who was one of three finalists for the trainer Eclipse Award, teamed up with Hernandez to sweep the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby (Mystik Dan) last spring.
No trainer had swept both in the same year since 1952.
“I fully expected her to win [Kentucky Oaks],” McPeek said. “She was a filly that, from the beginning, was the highest level of talent, and easy to be around. And continues to be. Actually, I think the [racing] future might be in front of her. You need luck in both of those races and need things to bounce your way. For them to come together in the same weekend, it’s a bit surreal, still.”
Havre de Grace’s Horse of the Year was the third in a row for a female horse, after the 3-year-old Rachel Alexandra (2009) and the mare Zenyatta (2010). Prior to that, the 4-year-old filly Azeri won it in 2002, then you have to go back to 1986, when the 4-year-old filly Lady’s Secret won Horse of the Year.
After winning the Breeders' Cup Classic, Sierra Leone was named champion Three-Year-Old Male, with 169 first-place votes to 34 for Fierceness. Fierceness beat Sierra Leone in the Travers, but lost to Sierra Leone by 1 1/2 lengths while running against older horses in the BC Classic.
Trained by Chad Brown, Sierra Leone finally won a big one in the BC Classic after close finishes in the Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes, Jim Dandy and Travers.
“That horse, I was just so happy for him and relieved, because we really felt like we had the best 3-year-old this year,” Brown said. “He was always a very consistent horse. And he was starting to get a bad rap, an unfair rap a bit, that he just doesn’t deliver when it counts.
“To see him come through on racing’s biggest day and beat older horses, I really, for a second, reflected on how proud I was of the horse and how deserving he was to be in that winner’s circle that day.”
Belmont Stakes and Haskell winner Dornoch was the other finalist in this category.
In one of the closest votes of 2024, Brown was named most outstanding trainer in 2024 for the first time since 2019, when he won his fourth straight. He drew 101 first-place votes to 88 for McPeek.
Among Brown's achievements last season, he won 45 races at Saratoga, including six Grade I stakes, the Diana (Whitebeam), Test (Ways and Means), Fourstardave (Carl Spackler), Personal Ensign (Raging Sea), Allen Jerkens (Domestic Product) and Hopeful (Chancer McPatrick).
“My team has done a fabulous job, and I’m really here just representing them,” Brown said. “It was a great year on dirt and turf, so to have such a diverse stable, I’m happy to see them recognized at least as nominees. That in itself is an accomplishment.”
Besides the six Grade I stakes wins at Saratoga, Brown won nine other Grade I’s in 2024, including the BC Classic with Sierra Leone.
“It started to feel a little different at Saratoga,” he said. “After the Kentucky Derby, that was a tough loss, and it was tough to keep morale up, just because it’s such a hard race to win. It was a heartbreaker.
“But at Saratoga, each week, when we kept rolling out those graded stakes, Grade I’s, a couple big upsets that we pulled off, then it really started to feel like our year. From there forward into the Breeders’ Cup, everything just picked up steam.”
In part because of his close association with Brown, Flavien Prat won his first Eclipse Award as most outstanding jockey in a landslide (202 first-place votes), after having broken Jerry Bailey’s North American record for graded stakes wins in a season, with 56.
Prat won for a variety of barns, though, and Saratoga was particularly good to him, break meet records with 18 stakes wins, 14 graded stakes wins and seven Grade I wins.
“I think what happened was the whole season I never had a month where it was a bit slow,” Prat said. “Every month, I’ve been good and built on the momentum, and it was a great season.”
Irad Ortiz, Jr., who was a finalist in 2024, won the championship five times in the previous six seasons.
Reflective of how no older dirt male established himself as a division leader in 2024, 10 different horses, led by National Treasure, received first-place votes, with two abstentions. National Treasure won just two of five races, the Pegasus World Cup in January and the Met Mile at Saratoga in June.
Likewise, nine different horses got first-place votes for Male Sprinter, with four abstentions. Straight No Chaser won that championship after racing just three times, but winning the BC Sprint.
The respective champion 2-year-olds, the colt Citizen Bull and the filly Immersive, each won in landslides. Immersive, who won twice at Saratoga, including the Grade I Spinaway, brings a 4-for-4 record into 2025, including the BC Juvenile Fillies.
The Eclipse Awards are voted upon by representatives from the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, and members of the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters and Daily Racing Form.
2024 Eclipse Award winners
Horse of the Year: Thorpedo Anna
2-Year-Old Male: Citizen Bull
2-Year-Old Filly: Immersive
3-Year-Old Male: Sierra Leone
3-YearOld Filly: Thorpedo Anna
Older Dirt Male: National Treasure
Older Dirt Female: Idiomatic
Male Sprinter: Straight No Chaser
Female Sprinter: Soul of an Angel
Male Turf Horse: Rebel’s Romance
Female Turf Horse: Moira
Steeplechase Horse: Snap Decision
Jockey: Flavien Prat
Trainer: Chad Brown
Apprentice Jockey: Erik Asmussen
Owner: Godolphin LLC
Breeder: Godolphin
