Can Havre de Grace do a 2011 to be in the conversation for Horse of the Year title next year?
After Horse of the Year Eclipse Award was presented to Azeri in 2002, there was a six years’ gap that only had the colts winning the award straight out, and the first filly after 2002 was Rachel Alexandra to win the Horse of the Year Eclipse Award
in 2009, and strange as it might seem, the next two years, 2010 and 2011 were also the fillies’ years for winning the top honours.
2011 stands as the third year that the Horse of the Year has been awarded to a filly, Havre de Grace.
The 2010 title was taken away by Zenyatta.
However, the fact that there have been colts, who have won the award back to back, like Curlin won it in 2007 and 2006 while going further down the line, the Horse of the Year Eclipse Award was won by Cigar in 1995 and then in 1996, then it is possible
that Havre de Grace can turn in a better year if not the same.
Even though the eight-year-old Curlin, horse of Smart Strike out of Sherriff’s Deputy has retired, yet if we compare his performance to that of Havre de Grace, then it might be possible to judge what would keep her away from winning the title next
year or what might make her eligible to win the award again next year.
Firstly, the racing experience duration of the two differs, but then the grades that they have raced in and won throughout matters more than the amount of races or the number of years.
Curlin’s second race after the special maiden stakes was a graded race while Havre de Grace took almost a year to race in her first graded stakes race, that she could not win.
The lowest that Curlin has ever gone is the third position that he got in the Grade 1 Haskell Invitational Stakes. Other than that he has been placed only twice, finishing second at both the occasions.
Not completely out of range or miserably rated, Havre de Grace finished fourth in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Classic, and have been placed in five of her other attempts.
Curlin has been ridden by the same jockey in his fifteen out of sixteen career starts, R Albarado while Havre de Grace has a consistent fluctuations of jockeys on her profile. They include J Rose, F Pennington, R Dominguez and G Saez.
Both have predominantly raced over the dirt surface.
Once when Curlin did start racing in the graded races, he participated in twelve grade one races with the only gap coming when he won the Jaguar Trophy Handicap.
He did race in a grade 2 and 3, but only once each, and that also at the very beginning of his career.
On the other hand, Havre de Grace has participated in only six grade 1 races, even out of them she managed winning two only, and besides that she has been dwindling between grade 2 and grade 3 in between.
Havre de Grace till yet has not raced the debut for the new season 2012, will she be ridden by the same jockey consistently throughout the year at least? Will all that races that she participates wil be grade 1 only?
Racing only the highest grade in itself is an opportunity that the best are offered.
Curlin raced for only two years but raced for and with the very best, notched with being the Horse of the Year both the times, in 2007 and then in 2008, a wholesome enviable career.
Getting there right away might just be an impossibility, but paving out the path cleverly might just work out.
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