Retrospective Champion Stayers (Part 1) · 4.02.10

For a while now I’ve been working on a retrospective list of unofficial champion stayers, to complement my on-going Stayers’ Watch series (see listing under “Features”) and the Unofficial Champion Stayer Award.

Last year’s unofficial champion stayer — the horse whose performances at distances of 1 1/2 miles and beyond, on dirt, turf, and synthetic surfaces, were deemed to be superior to its rivals — was Cloudy’s Knight in 2008 Champs Elysees earned the honours. But distance horses have laboured in relative obscurity for decades before I inaugurated this “championship, so it seems fitting to offer them at least belated recognition.

The precedent for naming “retrospective” champions was set in the early 1970s, when Kent Hollingsworth, then editor of The Blood Horse, pored over old racing publications and statistics and compiled a list of pre-1936 “champions”. This list, first published in a limited-edition book called The Great Ones, eventually gained quasi-official status and is regularly reprinted. In fact, Hollingsworth’s list is considered so authoritative that it is not unusual for a turf writer to state that, say, Sir Barton was named Horse of the Year for 1919 — when in fact there was no such title at that time.

So with a tip o’ the hat to Kent Hollingsworth — and recognizing that I bring to this project only a fraction of the knowledge and historical perspective that Hollingsworth brought to his — Left Coast Racing presents the first part of its Retrospective List of Champion Stayers:

Top horses for each year were selected based on their record in races of 1 1/2 miles or longer, adjusted according to each race’s grade-level. Victories in dirt races are given more weight to take into account North American racing tradition — which in part explains Easy Goer being ranked above two turf horses who raced more often at these distances. Horses listed as “honorable mentions” are cases where either the rankings are very close, or the horse’s accomplishments, while not championship-calibre, warrant special mention.

Part 2 of the retrospective list will continue looking backward to 1973 — the dawn of the graded-stakes era.

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