Acclamation bags the top older male Eclipse Award
While comparing Animal Kingdom and Caleb’s Posse for the 3-year-old Title, deciding the older male championship was far too easy, because Acclamation produced some scintillating victories as a 5-year-old at the back-end of the season, and 5 in a row helped him notch the Eclipse Award for 2011’s champion older male.
During his prolific 5 race win streak, Acclamation won 3 grade 1 races on the trot, which proved out to be most by any older male in the division, except the likes of Cape Blanco who matched Acclamation’s trio of grade 1 wins.
Cape Blanco has been declared as the male turf champion. Homebred for the Johnston family’s Old English Rancho, he started off his 2011 campaign with two disappointing starts.
He finished fifth in the Grade 1 Frank E. Kilroe Mile at Santa Anita, over a mile, to winner, Fluke.
He then fell further back in rankings when he ran in the Grade 3 Charles Town Classic at Charles Town race course, when he finished an unplaced 10th to winner, Duke of Mischief.
Things looked dismal for Acclamation for the rest of the season, because at this point in the season, he had lost 4 races in a row.
Two from 2010, in the Grade 1 Eddie Read Stakes at sixth, and ninth in the Grade 1 United Nation Stakes to Chinchon over at 1 3/8 miles.
Primarily a turf horse, trainer Donald Warren persisted with the same surface and changed his jockey, bringing in Joel Rosario for the first time to ride the 5-year-old.
He broke the 4 race losing streak with a win in the Grade 2 Jim Murray Handicap at Hollywood Park at about 1 ½ miles, a distance which he hasn’t tried before in his career.
The stretch out in distance and a new rider changed Acclamation’s season on his head, though in his next race, old partner, Joe Talamo rode Acclamation and guided him to victory in the Grade 1 Charles Whittingham Memorial Handicap at Hollywood Park.
Staying in California, the son of Claifornia’s leading sire, Unusual Heat, Acclamation, at Del Mar, landed the Grade 1 Eddie Read Stakes under Joel Rosario and then the Grade 1 Pacific Classic over the classic distance of 1 ¼ miles.
Capping off his season with a win in the Grade 2 Hirsch Turf Championship, an outstanding season came to an end which started with two disappointing losses, but turned around empathically to make it into an award winning season.
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