by Frank Stronach

Since the announcement of the 2008 Eclipse Awards several weeks ago, there has been public controversy surrounding the selection of outstanding owner. A number of owners and sports writers have questioned the validity or fairness of the results, but few have stopped to question the actual process used to determine the annual winners of the Eclipse Awards.

Federico Tesio, one of the greatest Thoroughbred breeders and owners of all time, once said that he preferred the race horse business to the show horse business for the simple reason that, with race horses, you could always tell who the winner was: it was the horse that crossed the wire first. Perhaps there is a lesson there for the way our industry hands out awards.

I would like to state upfront that I have never been happy with the selection process for the Eclipse Awards. It has always seemed to me to be too arbitrary, too much a popularity contest.

The award is needlessly exposed to criticism and controversy, with the result that its integrity becomes tarnished and the award itself risks falling into disrepute.

More than ten years ago, my horse Awesome Again won every single race he entered during the course of the year, including the 1998 Breeders' Cup Classic (G1), a race that many experts believe featured the strongest field of Thoroughbreds ever assembled. And yet, despite going undefeated, despite winning the biggest race of the year, Awesome Again was passed over for Horse of the Year, losing the award to a horse that he defeated in the Classic.

I never publicly questioned the result, but I was left wondering about the judging process, as were many others in our sport.

I believe the Eclipse Awards need to be based on a points system with a clear-cut formula. Points would be awarded to owners for races won, with low-level races (e.g., a claiming race) receiving the fewest points, while graded stakes races (e.g., Grade 1 races) would receive the highest number of points. Under such a system, owners that had smaller stables but with a large number of high-quality, championship horses would end up with more points than owners that had larger stables and a lot of low-grade wins.

A points-based formula similar to this could be easily developed and implemented for both the outstanding owner and outstanding breeder awards.

The points-based formula would be completely transparent, with the result that anyone could independently calculate the total number of points won by an owner. There would be no guessing as to who might win and no questioning afterwards why a certain owner or breeder received the award. And because the points-based formula would be pre-determined, no one could claim the process was unfair owing to the subjective views of various judges or the result of votes cast by judges with potential conflicts-of-interest. All of the inevitable human bias and favoritism that judges bring to the selection process would be stripped out, leaving nothing but hard data and quantifiable results.

This is simply one proposed method for determining the winners of the Eclipse Awards. Others may come up with a different solution—one that the entire industry can support and stand behind. If so, we should openly debate and consider all of the options for enhancing the award selection process, and we should begin the discussions now.

If our industry were to move to a points-based system such as the one I described above, then I believe the Eclipse Awards can preserve their integrity. The awards will no longer be based on mere popularity or the prevailing whims and views of a select number of judges; they will be based on tangible, indisputable yardsticks of success. In short, the Eclipse Awards can once and for all become the undisputed hallmark of success for our industry.

Frank Stronach is the founder and chairman of Magna Entertainment Corp. and the owner of Adena Springs farms in Kentucky, Florida, and Canada. He is the recipient of six Eclipse Awards as outstanding breeder and four Eclipse Awards as outstanding owner, including one of each for the 2008 season.