For Cigar, It’s a Clean Sweep and a Total Eclipse of the Field

The Eclipse Awards electorate voted the straight Cigar ticket, conferring championships on the 6-year-old horse and his owner, trainer and jockey by decisive margins.

Cigar won all of his races in 1995, and he also got all the votes. In results announced Thursday, the tally was Cigar 306, all other horses 0, in the balloting for best older male horse. Allen Paulson, who bred and raced Cigar, also won an Eclipse Award for owner, and other Eclipses went to Bill Mott, Cigar’s trainer, and to jockey Jerry Bailey, who rode him to victory in all 10 starts.

The only Eclipse not officially accounted for is for horse of the year, and Cigar’s camp is guaranteed that trophy when the vote is announced Feb. 9. Cigar also probably will capture all the votes on the horse-of-the-year ballot, which would make him only the second unanimous choice in the history of the Eclipse Awards, which started in 1971. John Henry polled all the votes in 1981, when he won his first of two horse-of-the-year titles.

Paulson, Mott and Bailey were not one-horse horsemen last year, but Cigar gave them the bulk of their purse totals. Paulson’s horses won 86 races and earned $7.2 million, the No. 1 purse total nationally. With $16.3 million in purses, Bailey broke the record of $15.9 million set by Mike Smith in 1994. Mott won 161 races, and his barn earned $11.7 million as he finished second to trainer Wayne Lukas on the trainers’ money list. Cigar’s purses, which included a $500,000 bonus for sweeping four races early in the year, totaled a record $4.8 million.

Lukas, whose purse total was $12.8 million, won three more divisional titles, giving him a record 22 since 1982, but he missed out on what would have been a record-breaking fifth Eclipse for training. Mott outpolled him, 181-119, in voting by an Eclipse electorate that consists of turf writers, track racing secretaries and Daily Racing Form personnel. The only other horseman with as many training titles as Lukas is the late Laz Barrera, who won four in a row in the 1970s.

Popular votes aside, horses and horsemen must poll a majority from at least two of the three voting groups in order to win an Eclipse, and this time all of the categories were settled by 3-0 scores.

Lukas’ latest champions are Thunder Gulch, best 3-year-old male; Serena’s Song, top 3-year-old filly; and Golden Attraction, best 2-year-old filly. Like Cigar, two of those horses were easy winners: Thunder Gulch, winner of four major races, including the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes, collected all but six of the votes in his division, and there were only five votes for fillies other than Serena’s Song, whose cross-country campaign netted nine stakes wins.

Other Eclipse winners were Inside Information, older filly or mare; Maria’s Mon, 2-year-old male; Northern Spur, male on turf; Possibly Perfect, female on turf; Not Surprising, sprinter; and Lonesome Glory, voted best steeplechaser for the third time in the last four years.

Ramon Perez, who became a journeyman at midyear, racked up $2.8 million in purses, mostly in New York, in the first six months and was voted the Eclipse Award for best apprentice jockey. Juddmonte Farms, owned by Crown Prince Khalid Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, earned purses of $3.2 million in North America and was voted the Eclipse for best breeder by a six-member committee.

Cigar’s championship season ended on Oct. 28 at Belmont Park, where he won the 1 1/4-mile Breeders’ Cup Classic on a muddy track in 1:59 2/5, a record for the race. When the son of Palace Music and Solar Slew, a Seattle Slew mare, began his career, in California in 1992, no one envisioned such accomplishments. Under Alex Hassinger, his first trainer, Cigar ran mostly on grass, as his breeding dictated, and he won but two of nine starts.

Midway through 1994, Paulson sent Cigar to Mott, his No. 1 Eastern trainer. Cigar continued to run on grass and lost four more times in New York. It was about this time that Mott learned that Cigar was suffering from a severe ulcer. Treatment for the ulcer and a switch to the dirt track turned out to be an unbeatable combination. In October 1994, Cigar won on the main track at Aqueduct, and a month later, in his 15th race, he won his first stakes race.

He hasn’t lost since and begins this year with a 12-race winning streak. He’s scheduled to run in the $1 million Santa Anita Handicap on March 2.

Horse Racing Notes

Gary Stevens had a year of years--$14.5 million in purses and 52 stakes wins, 17 of them in major races--but he was outvoted by Jerry Bailey, 197-82, for the Eclipse Award. “It’s a shame that Gary picked the year to do what he did in the same year that I did what I did,” Bailey said. “But that shouldn’t take anything away from what he accomplished.” . . . Russell Baze, who wins more races than anybody but doesn’t appear among the national money leaders because of the lower purse structure in Northern California, has been given a special Eclipse Award. Baze rode 448 winners last year, becoming the first jockey to go over the 400 mark four consecutive years. Special Eclipse Awards are given intermittently--Eddie Arcaro and Johnny Longden were honored in 1994--and the last active jockey to win one was Bill Shoemaker in 1976. . . . Baze will be at Santa Anita on Saturday, to ride Pinfloron in the $200,000 San Fernando Stakes. . . . David Flores, who has been in a drug-rehabilitation facility since Dec. 28, will ride at Santa Anita today and has the assignment on High Stakes Player in the San Fernando. Flores plans to commute from the rehabilitation unit to the track for the next two weeks.