The Eclipse Award for Champion Older Female Horse is an American Thoroughbred horse racing honor. In 1936 both the Turf & Sports Digest magazine and Daily Racing Form (DRF) began naming an annual champion. Starting in 1950, the Thoroughbred Racing Associations (TRA) began naming its own champion. The following list provides the name of the horses chosen by both of these organizations. Whenever there were different champions named, the horses are listed side-by-side with the one chosen as champion by the Daily Racing Form noted with the letters (DRF), the one chosen by the Thoroughbred Racing Associations by the letters (TRA) and the one chosen by Turf and Sports Digest by the letters (TSD).
Prior to 1971 this award was referred to as "Champion Female Handicap Horse" or "Champion Handicap Mare". The Daily Racing Form version was open to any female horse, and was given to some Champions at the age of three, such as Tosmah, Twilight Tear and Busher.
The Daily Racing Form, the Thoroughbred Racing Associations, and the National Turf Writers Association all joined forces in 1971 to create the Eclipse Award.
Champions prior to 1936 were selected retrospectively by a panel of experts as published by The Blood-Horse magazine.
Famous quotes containing the words american, champion, older, female and/or horse:
“It is to be lamented that the principle of national has had very little nourishment in our country, and, instead, has given place to sectional or state partialities. What more promising method for remedying this defect than by uniting American women of every state and every section in a common effort for our whole country.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“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)
“It would astonish if not amuse, the older citizens of your County who twelve years ago knew me a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flat boat—at ten dollars per month to learn that I have been put down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Said an ape as he swung by his tail
To his offspring both female and male,
“From your children, my dears,
In a couple of years
May evolve a professor at Yale.””
—Anonymous.
“Half the failures of this world arise from pulling in one’s horse as he is leaping.”
—Julius Hare (1795–1855)