Photo:

Alex Evers / Eclipse Sportswire

The best thing a horse who is not an older male can do for his or her Eclipse Award resume is defeat older males, and that is how Sierra Leone earned my vote for champion 3-year-old male and horse of the year.

I fully acknowledge that not much separates Sierra Leone from Fierceness, whom he narrowly defeated in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, nor from Thorpedo Anna, the filly who finished ahead of him in the Grade 1 Travers Stakes. But with all else being equal, I have no qualms leaning on America’s richest race, one in which every horse discussed here could have contested, as the deciding factor.

There are five viable candidates for champion 3-year-old male: Dornoch, Fierceness, Mystik Dan, Seize the Grey and Sierra Leone. Funny enough, the top two contenders, Fierceness and Sierra Leone, are the two who did not win a Triple Crown race.

Mystik Dan has only one Grade 1 win, but it was in the biggest race of all: the Kentucky Derby.

Dornoch and Seize the Grey are the only two-time Grade 1 winners whose victories include a classic win. Dornoch paired his Belmont Stakes with the Haskell plus an earlier graded-stakes win. Seize the Grey paired his Preakness Stakes with the Pennsylvania Derby plus an earlier graded-stakes win.

For my third-place finalist, I went with Seize the Grey because he completed the season. Yes, that was a dud in the Breeders’ Cup, but he was there.

Thank you to Elizabeth Martiniak for the correction on Dornoch’s Grade 1 victories. An earlier version of this article did not acknowledge the Haskell as a Grade 1. This was my error.

That leaves Fierceness or Sierra Leone as the final decision. Fierceness won the Florida Derby and Travers Stakes as his Grade 1 wins plus won the Jim Dandy (G2) and was second in the Classic. But he defeated Sierra Leone in both the Jim Dandy and Travers while finishing well behind him in the Derby.

Sierra Leone won the Blue Grass Stakes and Classic as his Grade 1 wins, plus the Risen Star (G2). He placed in both the Derby and Belmont before finishing behind Fierceness in the Jim Dandy and Travers, though he was never worse than third in seven races this year.

It is close, but that Classic was basically a winner-take-all for the top 3-year-olds. Sierra Leone came out on top and is a deserving champion 3-year-old male.

He would be a deserving horse of the year, too, but I have no delusions about him winning that award. Thorpedo Anna will win it easily. For those who see horse of the year as an award for the best campaign, I get it. She was awesome, and it is exciting that she will return as a 4-year-old along with Fierceness, Mystik Dan and Sierra Leone. But I can’t help thinking that she would not have hit the board in the Classic. Her second in the Travers was great and fun and exciting, but she didn’t win. The hypothetical works the other way, too. Would Sierra Leone have won the Breeders’ Cup Distaff? Of course.

Thorpedo Anna will be horse of the year, but Sierra Leone was the more accomplished racehorse in 2024.