Eclipse Recap: Pharoah History

The curtain officially closed on the 2015 racing season last night as the Eclipse Awards were finally handed out. It's no surprise with who was Horse of the Year, but lets take a look at all the winners.

2yo Female: Almost a unanimous decision for Songbird. Catch a Glimpse was the one who denied it.

2yo Male: Nyqvist like his counterpart was a no surprise winner.

3yo Female: In what was possibly the toughest division, Stellar Wind ended up being your champion. Honestly any of the 3 could have been and I'd be okay with it. In the end the right horse won.

3yo Male: Dortmund! Kidding, it was unanimous for American Pharoah as it should be.

Older Dirt Female: Beholder gets her 3rd Eclipse Award to add to her 2 and 3yo titles.

Older Dirt Male: Honor Code won... but who the heck voted for California Chrome? Come on! He was winless last year. So glad to see Shared Belief get some 1st place votes, gosh I miss him.

Sprinter Female: La Verdad won, but wished it was Wavell Avenue as she was a G1 winner or Lady Shipman who was amazing (lack of G1 turf sprints likely cost her the award). Plus the winner tested positive for clenbuterol and was DQ'ed due to it.

Sprinter Male: Runhappy won as he should. However Jim McIngvale thanked Laura Wholers (his sister in law and current trainer of Runhappy), but not Maria Borell who of course trained him for most of the year before firing her after the Breeders' Cup. Many took to Twitter to not condone what "Mattress Mac" did.

Turf Female: Tepin! I was actually a little bit nervous that Found would win, but she won easily.

Turf Male: I know that The Pizza Man fans where happy, but Big Blue Kitten had the more consistent year. Also Golden Horn who did not win a race in the US (but was dominate in Europe) finished in second for 1st place votes? That is odd.

Owner and Breeder: One of them I was not surprised that the Zayat's got, the other a little suprised. I figured they would get Breeder, but Owner I thought the Ramseys deserved it a little bit more.

Jockey: This was the award I was the most confident that Team Pharoah would not get and was right there. Javier Castellano deserved it based of his entire season. Plus he sent a sweet message to his mom in Spanish.

Trainer: Two of the candidates made have had more winners and more money, but no one was going to deny Bob Baffert his first Eclipse as a trainer since 1999. Also he dropped the award!

Horse of the Year: We knew who was going to be HOY, the question would be by how much. Turns out that that it was unanimous for Pharoah. Only one other horse in the Eclipse era has done that... the legendary John Henry. 

And other moments:

The Zayat's had a fire in their suite and the jokes made about them might have been a little bit too much, but funny.

Poor Steve Harvey :( Two mentions about him.

The AP and Me segments where cute! It was nice seeing some twitter friends pictures with Pharoah.

Please do not wear a cheesehead (Packers) again Jerry Bailey and his partner in crime Randy Moss' burns of the Cowboys (Todd Pletcher's favorite team) and Niners (Chad Brown's favorite team) where hilarious. (My condolences to Jerry and Bob as they are apparently both Packer fans (as well as several of my Twitter friends) as they lost yesterday)

Craig Bernick's speech about his grandfather Leonard Lavin was beautiful

I loved Tom Hammond's opening voiceover, but he was wrong about 2009 with it just being about Zenyatta

Jeannine Edwards' shot at Mattress Mac was hilarious at the end

Penny Chenery's message to Team Pharoah

Joanne Zayat speaking and thanking everyone.

Pharoah trying to eat his HOY trophy

As for Jeannine, honestly she has improved every year she's hosted, but can tell she's tiring of it a bit. I'm hoping that next year they bring in a new face. Maybe NBC's Laffit Pincay (who was excellent with his dad when they presented an award a few years ago), or Jeannine's former co-workers Jerry and Randy.

My one disappointment was there was no tributes to those who passed away last year including Allen Jerkins and Shared Belief, John Nerud (who we also lost year) was featured, but that was about Eclipse himself.

Overall though the ceremony was good and didn't run over 11pm here on the East Coast. I know many complained on Twitter... but they don't have to watch.

Till next year Eclipses... till next year.