Bricks And Mortar in Eclipse Awards sweep

Friday 24 January 2020, 6:11pm

Bricks And Mortar has had a perfect year, and the Eclipse Award voters have given his team an historic sweep of top honours.

After going six for six - all on the turf - at six tracks last year, Bricks And Mortar and his connections swept all eligible categories on Thursday (Friday AEDT).

He was the 2019 Horse of the Year with his rider Irad Ortiz jr the jockey Eclipse Award winner and trainer Chad Brown recognised as the sport's best for the fourth consecutive year.

Bricks And Mortar also was the unanimous pick as the best male turf horse after five Grade One wins including the Pegasus World Cup, and a Grade Two.

"We ran him against the best competition we could find," part-owner Seth Klarman said.

"He danced every dance."

Klarman's Klaravich Stables Inc and William H. Lawrence also won the Eclipse as top owner. The top breeder went to George Strawbridge, Jr., another part of Bricks And Mortar's connections.

The only other time a horse and its connections swept the Eclipse Awards was 1981, when John Henry was Horse of the Year and trainer Ron McAnally, jockey Bill Shoemaker, owners Dorothy and Sam Rubin and breeder Golden Chance Farm took the trophies.

Bricks and Mortar raced 13 times in his career, winning 11 and retiring with just over $7 million in earnings.

He beat out Maximum Security - the would-be winner of the Kentucky Derby had he not been demoted for interfering with other horses as he entered the straight - and Mitole for Horse of the Year.

They did not go home empty-handed. Maximum Security won the Eclipse as the top three-year-old male, and Mitole was the Eclipse winner as the best male sprinter.

Maximum Security's disqualification in the Kentucky Derby was recognised as the sport's moment of the year.

Covfefe won two Eclipse Awards, one as top three-year-old and the other as top female sprinter.

The other awards went to Storm the Court (2yo male), British Idiom (2yo filly), Vino Rosso (older dirt male), Midnight Bisou (older dirt female), Uni (female turf horse), Winston C (steeplechase horse) and Kazushi Kimura (apprentice jockey).

The Eclipse Awards are voted on by members of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, the Daily Racing Form and National Turf Writers And Broadcasters.

– AP

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »