The American Champion Male Turf Horse award is an American Thoroughbred horse racing honor. In 1971 it became part of the Eclipse Awards program and is awarded annually to a Colt or Gelding, regardless of age, for their performance on grass race courses.
The award originated in 1953 when the Daily Racing Form (DRF) named Iceberg II their champion. The Thoroughbred Racing Association (TRA) added the category in 1967. The organisations disagreed only once, in 1968.
The Daily Racing Form, the Thoroughbred Racing Associations, and the National Turf Writers Association all joined forces in 1971 to create the Eclipse Award. From 1953 through 1978 it was awarded to male or female horses although the only female champion was Dahlia in 1974. In 1979 an individual category was created for each of the sexes.
Read more about American Champion Male Turf Horse: Records
Famous quotes containing the words american, champion, male, turf and/or horse:
“The American West is just arriving at the threshold of its greatness and growth. Where the West of yesterday is glamorized in our fiction, the future of the American West now is both fabulous and factual.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“What a terrible thing has happened to us all! To you there, to us here, to all everywhere. Peace who was becoming bright-eyed, now sits in the shadow of death; her handsome champion has been killed as he walked by her very side. Her gallant boy is dead. What a cruel, foul, and most unnatural murder! We mourn here with you, poor, sad American people.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“Freedom of choice for women, at the expense of the caring, warmth, and sensitivity to others so often associated with them, may be empty. In the thrust to redefine male and female roles, women must not become men; nor can men be permitted the continual dehumanization of their roles.”
—Kathleen Weibel (b. 1945)
“Lie lightly on her, turf and dew:
She put so little weight on you.”
—Marcus Valerius Martial (c. 40–104)
“But all is changed, that high horse riderless,
Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode
Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)