American Horse Of The Year
The American Award for Horse of the Year is the highest honor given in American thoroughbred horse racing. Because Thoroughbred horse racing in the United States has no governing body to sanction the various awards, "Horse of the Year" is not an official national award.
The Champion award is a designation give to a horse, irrespective of age, whose performance during the racing year was deemed the most outstanding. The list below is a Champion's history compilation beginning with the year 1887 published by the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association's The Blood-Horse magazine (founded 1961), described by ESPN as "the Thoroughbred industry's most-respected trade publication".
In 1936 a Horse of the Year award was created by a poll of the staff of The New York Morning Telegraph and its sister newspaper, the Daily Racing Form (DRF), a tabloid founded in 1894 that was focused on statistical information for bettors. At the same time a rival poll was organised by the Baltimore-based Turf and Sport Digest magazine. Formed in 1942 as an advocacy group, the Thoroughbred Racing Associations (TRA) inaugurated a competing award in 1950, selecting its winners from votes by racing secretaries from member tracks across the United States. The three systems resulted in different opinions as to "Horse of the Year" Champions in 1949, 1952, 1957, 1965, and 1970. In 1971, the DRF and TRA made an agreement with the National Turf Writers Association to merge into one set of awards, called the Eclipse Awards.
Read more about American Horse Of The Year: Historical Notes On Winners, Records
Famous quotes containing the words american, horse and/or year:
“Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“If this bureau had a prayer for use around horse parks, it would go something like this: Lead us not among bleeding-hearts to whom horses are cute or sweet or adorable, and deliver us from horse-lovers. Amen.... With that established, let’s talk about the death of Seabiscuit the other night. It isn’t mawkish to say, there was a racehorse, a horse that gave race fans as much pleasure as any that ever lived and one that will be remembered as long and as warmly.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)
“These young women have had four years of very special space.... This has been special space. This has been safe space. But when they graduate, they will begin to deal on a daily basis, all day long, month after month, year after year, with the realities that still haunt our nation.”
—Johnnetta Betsch Cole (b. 1936)