I have given the new Eclipse Award for Filly and Mare Sprinters a lot of thought and I still cant come to a real conclusion. Perhaps writing about it will help me to organize my thoughts and consolidate my opinion.
I see advantages and drawbacks. We'll start with the drawbacks.
I think one of the primary reasons for this move is so that it coincides with the new Breeders Cup Filly and Mare Sprint race. In other words this is just another move that makes our year end awards more Breeders Cup centric. I personally think that's a negative, winning a Breeders Cup race is reward enough on its own. Championships should be awarded for year long excellence, not getting lucky on one day.
Another negative I see is that this may not end here. I mean do we now need an Eclipse award for top 2yo turfer? How about the top turf miler? Or how about an Eclipse Award to go to the top dirt miler, after all they have their own BC race now. It strikes me as a new way to award mediocrity. If we create a championship for every little niche then champions are no longer as special and exclusive as they once were.
This could also lead to a lack of divisional crossovers, I'm all for encouraging competitive racing and this move discourages it. In the past a filly who wanted the Sprint award usually took on males, now they don't have to and racing will now be deprived of seeing fillies like Safely Kept, Xtra Heat and Meafara tackle the boys. I personally thought that those fillies brought something extra to racing when they faced the boys. It generated an extra level of excitement and intrigue, this move will render such excursions pointless.
There are some positive however, the most obvious one is that it is simply more logical. There is a male and female counterpart to every other divisional award. Why sprinters were deprived of that symmetry for this long I don't know.
Also this award is a good way of recognizing some top notch filly sprinters that otherwise wouldn't get much consideration. Let's face it, the voters are pretty biased against the fillies. No filly has won since 1989 and some have deserved a long look for sure.
Here at Kennedy's Corridor one of our main features is the TCR system and the awards that go along with it. Our aim is to arrive at our results in a more logical fashion than the Eclipse Awards and show that it is completely possible, and actually more relevant, to have a point system work in tandem with with votes. I think the TCR system is the finest that can be found anywhere and the results it yields are a fantastic tool for quantifying on track accomplishment. Again I think it shows that a point system isn't such a crazy idea because of the relevance and accuracy of its results. Most people who fear point systems base that distaste upon the notion that it will consistently produce outrageous results. In truth many of the simplistic systems do produce terrible results, and even the best systems need to be balanced with votes. After all this has never been a sport that could be reduced to numbers.
The TCR will now feature a Filly and Mare Sprint Division. They are delineated by their very own colour, which happens to be fuchsia. If you visit the Full Standings spreadsheet on the sidebar you will be able to see how the Filly and Mare sprinters rank overall and not just divisionally.
Here is a list of the fillies who were the top TCR Filly and Mare Sprinters 99'-06'. They wouldn't not have necessarily been the champions because the voters would have had a 50% say, but at least it gives you an idea of who might have been champions. By the way just so we're clear I'm defining an FM Sprinter as one who ran at least 3 races at less than 8f and won at least one graded stakes sprint.
1999 - Furlough
2000 - Honest Lady
2001 - Xtra Heat
2002 - Xtra Heat
2003 - Harmony Lodge
2004 - Lady Tak
2005 - Bank Audit
2006 - Behaving Badly
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4 comments:
In looking at the 2007 "full standings worksheet/ i was wondering, and trying to recall whether or not the standings included races dating from january 1, 2007 only, or does it include races prior to january 1, 2007// In regard to modern training, kennedy's corridor gave an informative, descriptive contrast of the methods and philosophy of foreign trainers vs. their U.S. counterparts// In the end, i think the economics driving the racing industry is not good and is unlike that which has made America great/ Much of the bad, (and there is a lot of good), involves greed, and the willingness of some trainers and some owners to do anything to make $ (greed), and/or to survive/ the result is drugs, cheating, poor training techniques, and etc.,//Through it all comes the shining example of good/the 'thoroughbred'/ A beautiful animal willing to do mans' bidding in exchange for good care and a pat on the back/ chicago gerry
"i was wondering, and trying to recall whether or not the standings included races dating from january 1, 2007 only, or does it include races prior to january 1, 2007"
The standings for 2007 start on Jan 1st and end Dec 31st. In every case I use the actual calender year. That is why a horse like Latent Heat is ranked lower, the Malibu is not included.
how were you able to go back and calculate the prior winners so fast? Do you recieve a feed of stakes results or is this by hand?
"how were you able to go back and calculate the prior winners so fast? Do you recieve a feed of stakes results or is this by hand?"
I was able to get the prior winners quickly because they were already calculated. If you look at the spreadsheet all those horses were already listed and calculated, its just that they were either classified as sprinters or older mares not as filly sprinters. All I had to do was go back and identify the top ranked horses who would have been filly sprinters.
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