As much as there were several Eclipse Awards categories that seemed like toss-ups, there were no real surprises in the announcements of 2025 champions the evening of Jan. 22 at The Breakers Palm Beach in South Florida.
The surprises were mostly wider-than-expected margins of victory.
But there was a curious element to the announcing of the Horse of the Year finalists.
The finalists were announced as the victorious Sovereignty, Forever Young, and Journalism, in a contest, like all Eclipse voting,decided strictly on first-place votes.
But when the Horse of the Year vote totals were announced, there were three horses who received first-place votes. None of whom were Journalism.
Sovereignty was an easy winner with 201 of the 220 first-place votes, while Forever Young received 17 and 2-year-old champ Ted Noffey had 2.
So why wasn't Ted Noffey a finalist?
The reason is that while the winners are decided by first-place votes, the finalists are chosen based on a point system applied to each voter's 1-2-3 selections. It consists of 10 points for first, five for second, and one for third.
Under that format, Sovereignty had 2,088 points (201-15-3) while Forever Young was next with 616 (17-84-26). Journalism had 49 seconds and 43 thirds for 288 points. That topped Ted Noffey's 181 points based on a slate of 2-24-41.
Sierra Leone was fifth with 134 points (0-20-34).
The closest vote was for the champion sprinter as Book'em Danno beat Bentornato 115-82 in first-place votes.
The point totals were also close, with the New Jersey-bred Book'em Danno getting 1,491 points (115-64-21) and Bentornato 1,340 (82-99-25). Those totals showed Bentornato appeared on more ballots (206) than Book'em Danno (200).
A main reason for the different methodology in announcing finalists is to avoid instances in which there's a near-unanimous winner and only one or two odd first-place votes, such as Sovereignty in the champion 3-year-old male category.
Another instance of that was in the 2-year-old male category, where the undefeated Breeders' Cup Juvenile (G1) winner Ted Noffey received 218 of 220 first-place votes. The other two first-place votes went to Gstaad, winner of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf (G1T), and Further Ado, who won 2-of-4 starts and had a lone stakes win in the Kentucky Jockey Club (G2).
But in overall votes, grade 1 winner Brant dominated second-place votes and wound up second in points to become a finalist. He had 87 second-place votes and a 0-87-67 slate for 502 points, which was well behind Ted Noffey's 2,181 points. But it dusted Gstaad, who was third with 321 points (1-57-26) and was a finalist. Undefeated Champagne Stakes (G1) winner Napoleon Solo was fourth with 182 points (0-27-47) while Further Ado (1-14-17) tied for fifth with Breeders' Cup Juvenile runner-up Mr. A. P. (0-14-27) with 97 points.
