Orville Clarke, Freelance Writer
MIRACLE MAN
INDICATIONS ARE that Derby and Superstakes winner MIRACLE MAN was voted 2005 'Horse of the Year' at the annual balloting for top horse and other awards not determined by statistics in the Director's Room at Caymanas Park on Tuesday.
Hosted by Caymanas Track Limited (CTL), this the annual meeting of the 'Horse of the Year' committee, comprising members of the press and select racing officials, took the form of a luncheon.
The winners will be announced at the None/Such 'Horse of the Year' dinner on Thursday, February 16 at the Hilton Hotel, New Kingston.
At times the meeting became very stormy, especially in discussions relating to the Most Improved Trainer and Claimer of the Year categories.
REMARKABLE SEASON
By virtue notching five big race wins and a record $7.7 million in stakes, MIRACLE MAN, who also won the Lotto Classic and St. Leger in a remarkable season, was favoured by the 13-man panel based on exit polls, ahead of the 2003 'Horse of the Year' A KING IS BORN (first runner-up), who won five races from seven starts (including the Red Stripe Caribbean Sprint) and the classy imported colt CLOCK WORK, the unanimous choice for Best Foreign Bred.
A KING IS BORN looks safe for the Champion Sprinter award, not to mention Champion Middle Distance Performer.
Based on voting patterns, the award for best Local Bred Horse looks a toss up between A KING IS BORN and MIRACLE MAN. This is too close to call.
UNANIMOUS CHOICE
From all indications, RAMPAGE was the unanimous choice for Champion 2-Y-O and TASSY'S WHIP Best of the Opposite Sex. SUPER NATURAL apparently gained the nod as BestTwo-Year-old Sprinter, while MIRACLE MAN was Champion Three-Year-Old
Outgoing 'Horse of the Year' DISTINCTLY IRISH was the obvious choice for Best Stayer and Dalton Brown, Most Improved Rider.
While most of the above-mentioned awards were not the subject of heated debate, the same cannot be said about the Most Improved Trainer and Claimer of the Year categories.
It was felt by some members of the panel that trainer Anthony 'Baba' Nunes, who had a fabulous year and was indeed favourite for the award, had been training for too long to be cited as Most Improved Trainer.
It was also felt that Rowan Mathie, who saddled 11 winners in 2004 and improved 30 wins last year, was more worthy of the award, but then again it was said that Nunes made the bigger impact.
Claimer of the Year saw six nominees WIMBLEDON, RIZZI LEE, EMMVEEPEE, ZICKWARTY, TROPICAL STORM and FROMRUSSIAWITHLOVE.
It was argued among the panelists that ZICKWARTY and WIMBLEDON had no place on the list as they had seldom run in claiming races and were allowance horses. The same was true of RIZZI LEE, to a lesser extent.
Still, it could be close in this category, between EMMVEEPEE and TROPICAL STORM.
