Concerns about Eclipse qualifications misplaced

I recently filled out an Eclipse Award ballot for the 26th time. For many of those years, I would often get emotionally invested in the outcomes of the equine categories: passionate in support of my personal selections and filled with righteous indignation when horses I deemed relatively unworthy were elected in their place.

Age, though, has a way of tempering a younger man's misplaced rage. Sure, I might still do a figurative face palm, but the days of engaging in face-to-face or online debate about such matters are long over.

Frankly, it no longer makes sense to get worked up over the decisions of an electorate that increasingly lacks historical perspective, ignores precedents set by prior generations of voters, and whose malleable views are not grounded by any fundamental beliefs or criteria.

To some extent, voters today have it much harder than their predecessors. Top-level horses are now campaigned too sporadically, or not against each other often enough, to yield more objective assessments of their relative quality. Ironically, the blame thus falls largely on the very horsemen and breeders the Eclipse Awards were instituted to recognize and honor.

One recurring storyline regarding the 2025 Eclipse Award vote was a seemingly increased concern about rewarding horses that raced only once in the U.S. The proper question to ask, then, is "Why is this now suddenly a problem?"

Since the advent of the Breeders' Cup, voters have rarely batted an eye at rewarding European-based runners who came over and beat our best turf runners (male and female) or best juveniles. Would those voicing these concerns care to argue post facto who would have been more proper choices besides Pebbles, Miesque, Arazi, and Johannesburg, to take a few examples?

Most of such concerns this time centered on Forever Young, the Japan-based colt who defeated our best older dirt males on the square in the Breeders' Cup Classic (G1). No horse has ever won the Eclipse for best older dirt male award off one U.S. start, but is that so materially different from past honorees of the two grass awards or for the juvenile male award? 

Forever Young was named a finalist for the award, but whether he received a plurality of first-place voters, the ones that actually count, remains to be seen. If the final vote shows Forever Young has lost, I might shake my head. But my heart would no longer be in it to do more than that. There have been so many egregious selections in recent decades that there is simply no room left inside of me to ruefully dwell on more.