Cartier Awards

Here are the winners of the Cartier Awards which were held last night. In brackets I have listed where the horse finished in their divisional point standings.

Horse of Year: Ouija Board
Older Horse: Ouija Board (4)
3-Y-0 Colt: George Washington (3)
3-Y-0 Filly: Mandesha (2)
Stayer: Yeats (1)
Sprinter: Reverence (1)
2-Y-0 Colt: Teofilo (2)
2-Y-0 Filly: Finsceal Beo (2)

Interesting that just 2 of the 7 horses voted champions were actually the top ranked horses points wise. I personally think this is due to the strength of their points system. I dont know exactly how the Cartier Awards points system is calculated. But based on the results it produces a few things are clear. It doesnt deduct any division based on the strength of competition and it doesnt include races run outside of Europe.

If the TCR rankings were calculated for Europe it would have had 4 of the 7 divisional winners on top. The only ones who wouldn’t have been on top were George Washington, Yeats and Finsceal Beo and one could actually make great cases against all 3 of those horses. George Washinton and Yeats cheif among them. George is a popular horse, he must be because there is no way he had a better year than Rail Link. Yeats ran 4 times and only won two of them. Horses like Montare and Sergeant Cecil could rightfully feel agrieved at being overlooked.

Another strength of the TCR is its ability to be used for HOY rankings. The system that the Cartier Awards uses had Alexandrova top ranked ahead of Holy Roman Emperor, Pride, Hurricane Run and Rail Link. With the TCR rankings the top 5 HOY candidates listed in order would have been Ouija Board, Rail Link, Hurricane Run, Pride and Red Rocks.

All in all I still love the Cartier Awards setup, but they should look for a way to improve thier system. It could be much more relevant than it is.