Photo:

Rich Steele / Eclipse Sportswire

Flavien Prat bet big on himself two years ago when he moved his tack east after dominating the West Coast circuit. In 2024 that bet paid off big.

Prat is the prime candidate for his first Eclipse Award as leading jockey in the U.S. and Canada after an unprecedented season when he set records for both stakes and graded-stakes wins. Irad Ortiz Jr. had maintained a hold on the Eclipse five of the last six years.

Prat surpassed the longstanding mark for graded-stakes triumphs set by Jerry Bailey in 2003 when he piloted King of Gosford to victory in the Grade 2 Mathis Mile Stakes on Thursday at Santa Anita for his 56th such win. He had moved ahead of Ortiz with his 80th stakes victory overall with Godolphin homebred Poster in the Dec. 7 Remsen (G2) at Aqueduct.

As Bailey sees it, Prat’s willingness to move his wife Manon and their two children Elena and Lenny to New York so he could race primarily on that rugged but high-profile circuit changed everything.

“That was the key. That was not without risk,” Bailey said. “He was well settled in California. He was dominating out there. So kudos to him for making the move, because it’s a risk.

“It’s no cinch that you’re going to be that successful coming east, especially at meets like Saratoga. He had things pretty much his own way out there (in California).”

In 2024, Prat displayed an uncanny ability to rise to the occasion. At Saratoga, he raised the bar with 18 stakes victories, three more than the record John Velázquez set in 2004 and which Ortiz and Joel Rosario each matched two summers ago.

The Breeders’ Cup provided another grand showcase of Prat’s skills. He earned his first Bill Shoemaker award by winning the Classic with Sierra Leone and the Filly & Mare Turf with Moira to go with third-place finishes aboard Domestic Product in the Dirt Mile and Mullikin in the Sprint. The well-timed rally with Sierra Leone is of particular note, because it is part of a working relationship with top trainer Chad Brown that continued to develop with Prat’s move east.

“Every one of us needs really good horses to do something like this,” Bailey said of Prat’s monster season. “I think he had more of a full complement of those horses after having spent a full year on the East Coast.”

Of course, many good horses are done in by human error, riders who get swept up in unrealistic pace scenarios or who wait too late to make their move. Those things hardly ever seem to happen to Prat, if they happen at all.

“I was impressed by a lot of his rides this year throughout the year,” said Bailey, an NBC Sports commentator. “He does not seem to have any discernible weaknesses. He can ride them all.”

Bailey, winner of a record seven Eclipse Awards, noted the tremendous role agent Ron Anderson played on his behalf in 2003 and in other big seasons. He pointed to Prat’s accomplishments as a great reflection on agent Brad Pegram. Ortiz is represented by highly regarded Steve Rushing.

“Agents for these guys are competing themselves at the highest level,” Bailey said. “They can’t make mistakes in these big races, because Irad and Flavien are offered multiple horses in these major stakes races.”

Even with Prat’s breakthrough season, it should be noted Ortiz put together another huge year and won considerably more races. According to Equibase, Ortiz reached the winner’s circle 327 times from 1,549 starts in 2024 to 230 wins from 1,040 starts for his rival. Prat sat on top in earnings with $37,274,176 to $32,963,380 for Oritz.

With those two riders at their peak at age 32, future Eclipse races should be compelling.