USA

All the love is for Thorpedo Anna

THE three-year-old filly Thorpedo Anna (193 votes) proved a runaway winner of the US Horse of the Year Award at the annual Eclipse Awards on Thursday night in Florida.

Winner of five Grade 1s in the 2024 season, she also narrowly lost to Fierceness in the Travers Stakes.

Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Sierra Leone was second in the voters lists but with just 10 votes.

The filly is the first female since Havre de Grace in 2011. She and Rachel Alexandra in 2009 are the only three-year-old fillies to be voted Horse of the Year.

“It’s been a fantastic ride, and it’s only started,” her trainer Kenny McPeek said.

It was a close race in the Awards voting for the Male Turf Horse with Charlie Appleby’s Rebel’s Romance (89 votes) just seeing off Johannes (81).

The Pegasus World Cup and Met Mile winner National Treasure took the Older Dirt Male Championship while Idiomatic again won the Champion Older Dirt Female title.

After a record year jockey Flavien Prat took the Eclipse for Outstanding Jockey and Chad Brown beat Kenny McPeek to take the trainers’ Award. It was the fifth Eclipse Award for Brown and the first for Prat.

Godolphin also captured Eclipse titles as owner and breeder for the fourth year in a row.

The Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winners Citizen Bull and Godolphin’s Immersive were voted top two-year-olds and Breeders’ Cup victories also gave Soul Of An Angel and Straight No Chaser female sprinter and male sprinter, respectively. Success in Del Mar also brought the Canadian mare Moira the Female Turf Horse Award. Snap Decision finally won the Award for the top jumps horse.