Two Year Old Glory – 2001 Class
Two Year Old Glory
2001 Eclipse Award Winners
With the Breeders Bowl just around the corner and lots of owners and trainers nervously watching the rankings, I thought we would take a look back at End of the Year Eclipse winners in the two year old division and see what these owners have to look forward to in the future.
According to Yoss, there are over 22,700 two year olds bred this year. The owners of these youngsters are obviously hoping for long careers with many wins and much excitement ahead. It just seems logical that if you have a successful two year old, your chances are even better long term for the success of your horse. We are going to look at the most successful of the two year old crop for the past five years. These horses are the Eclipse Award winners, given to the best of the best, the division champions for the year in the two year old category.
This article looks at the winners from five years back, 2001. We previously looked at the select group from the 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 race seasons. If you haven’t checked those articles out, they are in the General Section at the Black Type Bugler.
| DIVISION | NAME | 2 YR Old | 2 Yr $$$ | 3 Yr Old | 4 Yr Old | 5 Yr Old | 6 Yr Old | LIFETIME | EARNINGS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dirt Filly | SEEKIN GAL | 7/ 6-1-0 | $1,242,520 | 10 / 2-1-2 | 7 / 0-1-1 | 6 / 1-0-1 | 5 / 0-2-0 | 35 / 9-5-4 | $1,826,290 |
| Dirt Colt | TOWER STORM | 9 / 7-1-1 | $899,350 | 11 / 4-3-1 | 3 / 0-1-0 | 7 / 3-1-1 | 6 / 2-1-1 | 36 / 16-7-4 | $3,576,557 |
| Turf Filly | DANCING BLADE | 8 / 7-1-0 | $1,076,330 | 14 / 5-3-3 | 11 / 2-3-1 | 11 1-0-2 | Retired | 44 / 15-7-6 | $2,555,630 |
| Turf Colt | THE PRETENDER | 8 / 4-0-3 | $669,300 | 16 / 6-4-1 | 12 / 4-0-3 | 7 / 1-0-3 | 0 / 0-0-0 | 43 /15-4-10 | $1,104,763 |
This is the fifth crop of Eclipse winners we’ve looked and it is definitely one of if not the most successful of all of them. If a couple of the runners had kept running, we may have seen some all time greats here. There is no real way of knowing but one horse was especially lightly races and retired way too early. We have a nice looking broodmare and some of her offspring to follow in the years to come as well. Let’s get to it!
(If you click on the name of the horses below it will take you to their write up for their Sim Eclipse award in the year that they won)
Here is a filly, SEEKIN GAL that fulfilled a few dreams for owner Preakness. She was a two year old champion, then had a solid career with a Graded and Stakes win at three and top five finish in the Breeders Bowl. For the next three years she remained competitive although she only won one more time. She was retired after her six year old season after a second place in an allowance race to begin her breeding career. She earned nearly $2million in her racing career.
| SEEKIN GAL7 Year Old Mare
Progeny
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Finally we have a two year old champion that foaled a Graded winner! ROYAL WOODBINE was sired by GREEN DESERT and is making his Mom proud. He won a Grade II earlier this year as a three year old and has two seconds in Graded races as well. He may not meet his Mother’s stats but he looks like he may be good for a long time. She just recently had another foal to the same sire, ISLAND GREEN who is unraced but is ready to start her career imminently. Hopes are high for this full sister as well. Hopefully, this great champ can be as good in the breeding shed as she was on the track!
Probably the second best of all of the two year old champions we have looked at behind GENERAL’S CHARIOT, is TOWER STORM. He is actually very lightly raced and has still won over $3.5 million and 16 races over his career. His three year old season was more of the same for this champion. He won the Bluegrass Derby and ran second in The Middle Jewel. He won four Grade I’s that year and was a force to be reckoned with. It was then that his career took a surprising turn. At four he raced only three times and they were all Allowances, at five he only ran seven times and won three, one of which was a Stakes race. As a six year old, he ran only six times, winning his first two at the Allowance level and went back to the Graded circuit and was very competitive. His final two races, he finished second and fourth in Grade I’s and then he was put away in the stable to be forgotten. He hasn’t raced, hasn’t retired and his stable is unused this year at all. What a shame to see this great champion languishing in obscurity.
Another successful filly from this year is DANCING BLADE . She had two more years of multiple wins after her wonderful two year old season. At three she continued her streak from the end of the previous year with a total of five consecutive wins. The amazing thing about the streak is that not only were they all Stakes and Graded wins but that three were on dirt and two were on turf. This filly was one of those rare horses that didn’t seem to mind what she was running on. She finished that year with five Stakes wins including two Grade I’s. She remained on top of her game at four with two Stakes wins, including a Grade II. She won another Stakes race at five years of age and was always in the top half of the field before she ended the season after eleven races to hit the breeding trail.
| DANCING BLADE7 Year Old Mare
Progeny
As a broodmare she has had moderate success with one very solid six times Allowance winer who is a Stakes Placed colt that may yet win a Stakes race. She also has foaled a GALILEO sired filly that has three allowance races but is still looking to find herself. Her third foal appears to be her weakest, who hasn’t won in five outings. Another very solid horse from this class is THE PRETENDER who won five Stakes races as a three year old and two more as a four year old. He never was much in the Graded races he entered but he was a formidable Stakes opponent. He moved to Allowances as a five year old has a win and three thirds in only seven races. Then like some of the other horses we’ve mentioned, he disappeared. Amazingly, this colt was sold twice in his short career, once during his champion two year old season. That leaves at least three owners that could be using him to sire/foal a horse with some great bloodlines. He is however, missing in action. This group of champs has a few more stories than most. They were all million dollar earners and all were multiple winners at least their first two years of racing. They were all successful in their own way and a couple are really special. It would have really been nice to see a couple of the horses finish their careers or see what they may have produced in offspring. I am working on one more article to summarize what we have learned from this five year study. Keep an eye out for it. Email your comments to pazjazz.btb@gmail.com I love to hear from you!
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