His Year Was No Apparition

The Eclipse Awards ballots are due by Monday, finalists will be announced Jan. 5 and the winners will be declared Jan. 24. Let the second-guessing begin.

Trainer Bobby Frankel says that anybody who votes against Ghostzapper for the wrong reason is a Grinch, or worse.

“I saw where [one voter] wrote that he was voting for Smarty Jones for horse of the year because of all the good he did for the game,” Frankel said, hyperventilating to the task.

“Good for the game? Is that what this is? Somebody who thinks like that ought to have his vote taken away. The best horse is what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the horse who shows up on Breeders’ Cup day. We were there, and the other horse wasn’t. That’s the reason we have the Breeders’ Cup, isn’t it?”

With horse of the year on the line in 2002 and 2003, Frankel’s Medaglia d’Oro came up empty down both times in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, finishing second twice to longshots, Volponi at Arlington Park and Pleasantly Perfect at Santa Anita. Then in October, at Lone Star Park, Frankel finally caught the brass ring when Ghostzapper, completing an undefeated, though abbreviated, campaign when he won the Classic in record time.

That has set up a vote, among an electorate of about 250, between Ghostzapper and Smarty Jones, who ran seven times, three more than Ghostzapper, and lost only once.

The trouble is, Smarty Jones lost in the Belmont Stakes, when the Triple Crown was the prize. Smarty Jones, winner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness in convincing performances, never ran again and never got the chance to race older horses, including Ghostzapper.

Frankel is right about voters being wrong if they vote for Smarty Jones because he was short-term hype for a sagging game. But voters will also be wrong if they discount Smarty Jones just to penalize his owners, Roy and Pat Chapman, who ended the horse’s career Aug. 2 with an announcement about a $39-million breeding deal.

Throughout the Triple Crown, the Chapmans promised that they would run Smarty Jones as a 4-year-old. That they reversed themselves, after the colt came up with ankle injuries that seemed minor at the time, might be a strike against the owners, but the horse’s record should stand on its own.

Since then, there’s been an attempt at damage control. Last month, Larry Bramlage, a respected Kentucky veterinarian, even wrote a long letter to the Blood-Horse magazine, offering to take the fall for the Chapmans.

In many years, Smarty Jones would have done enough to win the title. Since the first Eclipse Award for horse of the year was given, in 1971, only five champions have had better records. Three of them -- Spectacular Bid in 1980, Cigar in 1995 and Favorite Trick in 1997 -- went undefeated. Two others -- Ack Ack in 1971 and Azeri in 2002 -- had higher winning percentages than Smarty Jones. Two more -- Seattle Slew in 1977 and Point Given in 2001 -- matched Smarty’s record of six wins in seven tries.

But the historical truth is, voters tend to favor older horses unless the 3-year-old contender sweeps the Triple Crown. Even winning the first two-thirds of the crown, as Smarty Jones did, seldom carries enough weight at election time.

The only Derby-Preakness winners, who didn’t sweep the triple, to also land an Eclipse horse of the year have been Sunday Silence in 1989 and Charismatic in 1999.

Sunday Silence beat Easy Goer, his Triple Crown nemesis -- and the spoiler in the Belmont -- on the square in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Charismatic seemed to get a pass from the voters when he suffered a career-ending injury trying to win the Belmont. By Breeders’ Cup time, the voters were desperate for another option, but none came up when Cat Thief -- one of Charismatic’s stablemates -- won the Classic at 19-1. Charismatic, who won only four of 10 starts, one of them via disqualification, claimed horse of the year with 55 1/2 votes, only 26% of the total.

There was no Cat Thief at this year’s Breeders’ Cup to ease the path for Smarty Jones. Ghostzapper broke Skip Away’s stakes record for 1 1/4 miles and won by three lengths. It was a powerful performance, not unlike some of his earlier wins.

He was a 4 1/4 -length winner of the Tom Fool Handicap, at seven furlongs, in his first start, then won the Iselin Handicap by 10 3/4 lengths over a muddy track. In his only close call, Saint Liam, at equal weights, almost beat him in the Woodward.

The vote here, without reservation and absent any malice toward the Chapmans, is for Ghostzapper. Going undefeated and thrashing a crackerjack field in the Breeders’ Cup supersede what Smarty Jones did in the Triple Crown series.

If he wins, Ghostzapper will be the second-lightest-raced champion. In the pre-Eclipse era, in 1954, Native Dancer was voted horse of the year off three wins in three starts, the last of them while carrying 130 and 137 pounds.

The suspicion lingers that voters’ remorse had overcome the electorate. In 1953, Tom Fool went undefeated in 10 starts, winning the title, while Native Dancer’s only loss in 10 races was his hard-luck second in the Kentucky Derby. Tom Fool or Native Dancer: For those voters, that was truly a hand wringer.