Undefeated Horse of The Year
Trained by Byrne and ridden by Pat Day in all his races, at age two Favorite Trick went undefeated in eight starts. He scored victories in major races such as the Hopeful Stakes and Breeders Futurity. He then capped off his year with a win in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile after avoiding a near-collision on the first turn. He ran away from the field to win by a five increasing lengths while setting a Breeders' Cup Juvenile record of 1:41.47.
Favorite Trick's performances in 1997 earned him the Eclipse Award for Outstanding 2-Year-Old Male Horse, and he became the first two-year-old since Secretariat in 1972 to be voted the Eclipse Award for Horse of the Year. Going into the 1998 racing season, many people made comparisons between the horses. Like Secretariat, Favorite Trick was the winterbook favorite for May's Kentucky Derby. However, some turf writers and other racing people noted that Favorite Trick had not clocked any remarkably fast times and that six of his wins had been at distances between five and seven furlongs, with both the Breeders Futurity and the Breeders' Cup Juvenile at 1 1/ miles. As a son of a sprint horse, some believed that it remained to be seen if Favorite Trick could compete at the longer distances of the American Classic Races.
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Famous quotes containing the words undefeated, horse and/or year:
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—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“A good horse will never return to graze on grass it has already passed by.”
—Chinese proverb.
“This generation is very sure to plant corn and beans each new year precisely as the Indians did centuries ago and taught the first settlers to do, as if there were a fate in it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)