Zenyatta: 2010 Horse of the Year, One for the Ages

Just like the Breeders' Cup Classic back two months earlier, the Eclipse Award for thoroughbred Horse of the Year Monday night was highly anticipated, hotly debated, and was decided by a narrow margin that left the contestants breathless.

Unlike the Classic, Zenyatta beat Blame.

In reality, though, the Horse of the Year race began and ended at the same time -- at the finish line at dusk on the Churchill Downs track in November. Blame made a daunting case for himself, giving credence to the pre-Classic notion that whoever might upset the people's-choice mare would lock up the award.

But Zenyatta's unforgettable charge down the stretch to nearly catch him, pass him and put the finishing touches on a perfect career ended up sealing the deal. Also helping: the idea, expressed almost immediately after they passed the wire, that the second-place horse was far more likely to be the one remembered a decade or two from now than the winner.

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The totals from the actual Eclipse voters weren't due until after the new year -- but the 72,739 on hand and the estimated 4.3 million watching on television (not to mention the slack-jawed media contingent above the grandstand) all cast their votes as Zenyatta's heart-stopping rally fell tantalizingly, and endearingly, short.

As it happens occasionally in sports, the ultimate reality show, defeat inspired even more love than victory might have. No less than Zenyatta's co-owner, Ann Moss, acknowledged that, in a FanHouse story the week after the Classic defeat: "People have trouble with perfection, it's hard for them to understand."

And that's saying a lot, considering how much passion Zenyatta stirred by being perfect. Racing has been in the super-horse business for too long, and too many years have been propped up by one spectacular animal that caught the nation's fancy and ran with it as far as possible. (No, you don't want another recap of the Triple Crown contenders in the last decade who did face-plants in the Belmont, do you?)


Zenyatta transcended. She was a force of nature. Sometimes all you can do is cover up and ride it out. That's basically what Blame's team did when the voting results were announced.

"We're not surprised by anything,'' Al Stall, Jr., Blame's trainer, told the "Daily Racing Form" after the ceremony in Miami. "We did everything absolutely possible last year. We laid out a plan and executed it properly. We really couldn't have done anything more other than maybe win them all, but I'm not sure even that would have made a difference.''

Probably not.

Zenyatta fever already had extended its reach to the general public by the time the respective horses had landed in Kentucky in the fall, and by race time, it was an epidemic. Zenyatta might have won the Eclipse had she finished, in the piercing words of the track announcer in mid-race that night, "dead last.''

But losing as honorably, nobly and mesmerizingly as Zenyatta did? Blame and his people should've known that they'd better settle for winning the battle and not the war.

"It's a wonderful thing,'' Ann Moss told the Lexington Herald-Leader after the ceremony, "because she does lift spirits and fill hearts with joy."

(For what it's worth, Zenyatta still has her own Twitter feed, which attracted attention as the race approached from celebrities like Alyssa Milano and Terrell Owens. On Tuesday morning she posted: "So I woke up to the news this morning. I'm incredibly humbled. Thank you everyone!'' The feed still has more than 1,300 followers, and she's done little more since the Breeders' Cup than eat carrots and wait for her broodmare contract to get ironed out.)

Of course, within minutes of the announcement of the closest of the Eclipse horse competitions this year (Zenyatta out-polled Blame 128-102 among the 235 voters), the message boards and comment sections dug their heels into their already-polarized positions. The invective flew as heavily as it had in the year leading up to the Classic, with the naysayers disparaging Zenyatta for the competition she beat over her career and the record she built up on synthetic tracks -- that is, the ones who weren't raging against what they saw as out-of-control hype.

But the numbers don't lie -- not Zenyatta's 19-1 record, but the figures that tell of the intense, widespread interest in a sport edging closer to its expiration date. Even the volume of venom is a sign of health.
The likes of Zenyatta aren't likely to grace the racing business again for a while, if ever. Had she not been recognized for that, even with that one defeat at the end, it would have been a blight on the sport, the Breeders' Cup Classic, the award itself, and her legacy.

The problem, as always, is that the patient is still gravely ill. And now, with the final battle waged by ballot, Zenyatta and Blame are retired and off the radar ... to be replaced by hope bordering on desperation. The Classic and Eclipse battles obscured the fact that last year was another underwhelming one for the 3-year-olds and for the Triple Crown races, and there are not only no Zenyattas in the barn ready to go, there aren't even guarantees that there will be barns for them. (Remember last month's reprieve from the governor that, in essence, saved this year's Preakness from going broke and/or out of business?)

The likes of Zenyatta aren't likely to grace the racing business again for a while, if ever. Had she not been recognized for that, even with that one defeat at the end, it would have been a blight on the sport, the Breeders' Cup Classic, the award itself, and her legacy.

Zenyatta finished second at Churchill Downs that night. But she deserved this win all the way.

Zenyatta: 2010 Horse of the Year, One for the Ages