Holy Bull Does the Inevitable and Handily Wins Horse of Year : Horse racing: Eight victories and $2 million in earnings bring the anticipated landslide in Eclipse Award voting.

Holy Bull, who is built like Secretariat and also wins the way he did, scored the biggest landslide in recent Eclipse Awards voting history Friday, when he was named 1994 horse of the year at the annual Eclipse Awards dinner in Washington.

Holy Bull, bred to sprint but a winner at distances from seven furlongs to 1 1/4 miles, won an earlier Eclipse by easily outpointing all rivals from one of the best 3-year-old fields in years. He did not even have to run in the year-end Breeders’ Cup to prove his superiority because owner-trainer Jimmy Croll was confident that eight victories in 10 starts and $2 million in earnings were enough to land thoroughbred racing’s most prestigious prize.

The voters overwhelmingly agreed. Holy Bull received 241 of the 246 votes cast. The winning margin was the widest since 1989, when Sunday Silence took 232 of 241 votes, and probably the largest ever.

“This is a great honor,” Croll said. “Not in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be the owner and the trainer of a horse of the year.”

Rachel Carpenter, the supermarket heiress who had been racing horses with Croll for almost 40 years, willed Holy Bull to the 74-year-old trainer. She died Aug. 14, 1993, the day the strapping gray colt made his debut with a victory at Monmouth Park.

Bred by Carpenter, Holy Bull came from modest parentage. His sire, Great Above, was a durable runner, but he won only 13 of 63 starts and was overmatched at distances beyond a mile. The dam, Sharon Brown, won only three of 32 races. There were 424 offspring from Great Above’s first 11 crops. None won a major race.

“Nobody told him,” Croll said. “Holy Bull doesn’t know that he’s not supposed to win over a distance of ground.”

Tall and well-proportioned, Holy Bull weighs more than 1,100 pounds. “He compares with the best 3-year-olds this period,” said Joe Hirsch, the veteran Daily Racing Form columnist and one of the sport’s foremost historians. “I don’t think he was quite as good a 3-year-old as Secretariat (horse of the year in 1972-73), Seattle Slew, Affirmed or Spectacular Bid, but he wasn’t far off.”

A sloppy track and an awkward start contributed to a 12th-place finish for Holy Bull in the Kentucky Derby in May, but after that he was undefeated, reeling off victories in the Metropolitan Handicap, the Dwyer and the Woodward at Belmont Park and the Haskell Invitational at Monmouth and the Travers at Saratoga. The Metropolitan and Woodward, won against older horses, solidified Holy Bull’s position for many voters.

“The highlights were the Travers and the Woodward,” Croll said.

“My favorite moment was the Woodward,” said Mike Smith, Holy Bull’s jockey. “He beat older horses for the second time that day, and the way people responded to him after the race was something. They cheered so loud I thought the grandstand was going to come down.”

Croll said that he will run Holy Bull one more year before the horse is sent to stud. In his first outing as a 4-year-old, at Gulfstream Park last Sunday, Holy Bull registered a convincing victory, his 13th in 15 starts overall. Croll plans to run the colt in the Donn Handicap at Gulfstream next month, then ship him to California for the Santa Anita Handicap on March 11.

Croll’s long-term goal is the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Belmont Park on Oct. 28. It will cost $360,000 to supplement Holy Bull into the race because he wasn’t nominated after he was foaled. Croll said that it was not the money that kept Holy Bull out of last year’s Breeders’ Cup.

“He had had a long year,” the trainer said, “and he needed a breather before we cranked him up for this year.”

Holy Bull’s only other defeat was his last-place finish in last February’s Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream, a loss that was blamed on a temporary breathing problem when the colt flipped his palate.

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Horse Racing Notes

Before the Eclipse dinner, the Thoroughbred Racing Assns. held its annual board meeting and elected Cliff Goodrich of Santa Anita to a two-year term as president. Goodrich, who had been one of three vice presidents of the 40-track trade group, is the first California president of the TRA since Bob Gunderson of Bay Meadows in 1979-80. The last TRA president from Santa Anita was the late Bob Strub, in 1963-64.

Mike Smith, who rode Holy Bull in all his races last year, also won an Eclipse Award for best jockey for the second consecutive year. . . . Smith got the mount during Holy Bull’s 2-year-old season, after Craig Perret turned down the assignment to ride another horse. . . . Croll’s divisional champions include Forward Gal, Housebuster and Parka. Parka, who was owned by Rachel Carpenter, became a grass champion after being claimed out of a race by Croll for $10,000.