Eclipse Awards debates have been a part of the process since the inception of the awards in 1971. Some of the 2025 divisions are open-and-shut cases, but one category sure to generate some heated arguments this year is the older dirt male division.
A final chance to travel around two turns as a 2-year-old in a Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve qualifying race awaits a field of 12 in Saturday’s Remington Springboard Mile. The two-turn test offers a purse of $300,000 plus 10-5-3-2-1 points toward qualifying for the 2026 Derby to the top 5 finishers.
It was a relatively quiet week in Thoroughbred racing across North America, with just one graded stakes on the schedule Dec. 13, but the Equibase jockey standings remain fiercely contested, with Irad Ortiz Jr. and Flavien Prat locked in a battle for the top spot based on 2025 North American earnings. Both have more than $39 million in earnings with roughly two weeks remaining in the year.
As Richard Mandella reflected in 2017 on his magnificent training career, he said that he drew greater motivation from fear of failure than aspirations of greatness.
“I never had any great dreams about what it actually became. Hall of Fame and all of that, it never entered my mind,” he said. “I just wanted to be some kind of success.”
The second Saturday in December produced a bigger shakeup in the Rookie Rankings for next spring’s Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve than many racings fan might have expected.
