The nominations for the 28th annual Cartier Racing Awards were unveiled on Sunday.
Horses trained by John Gosden in Newmarket have gained the Cartier Horse of the Year Award three times in the last four years – Kingman (2014), Golden Horn (2015) and Enable (2017).
Britain’s champion Flat trainer holds a very strong hand again, being responsible for four of the five nominations for the 2018 Cartier Horse of the Year – Cracksman, Enable, Roaring Lion and Stradivarius.
Thus brilliant four-year-old filly Enable, winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (Fr-G1) for the second year and the recent Breeders’ Cup Turf (G1), could become the third horse to win the Cartier Horse of the Year Award twice, following on from Frankel (2011 & 2012) and Ouija Board (2004 & 2006).
The 28th Cartier Racing Awards will be presented at a glittering ceremony before an invited audience of approaching 300 at the Dorchester Hotel, London, England, on the evening of Tuesday, November 13, 2018.
European horseracing’s equivalent of the Oscars are delivered through a tried and tested combination of points earned by horses in Pattern races (30%), combined at the end of season with the opinions of a panel of racing journalists/handicappers (35%) and votes from readers of Racing Post and The Daily Telegraph plus ITV Racing viewers (35%).
The longstanding and prestigious awards were established in 1991 to reward excellence in horseracing. There are eight equine awards, ranging from the Cartier Horse of the Year to the Cartier two-year-old colt and Cartier two-year-old filly.
The nominations for each of the equine awards, in alphabetical order, are as follows:
CARTIER HORSE OF THE YEAR
Alpha Centauri
Cracksman
Enable
Roaring Lion
Stradivarius
CARTIER OLDER HORSE
Cracksman
Enable
Lightning Spear
Poet’s Word
CARTIER THREE-YEAR-OLD COLT
Masar
Roaring Lion
Sands of Mali
Saxon Warrior
CARTIER THREE-YEAR-OLD FILLY
Alpha Centauri
Laurens
Sea of Class
Wild Illusion
CARTIER SPRINTER
Battaash
Mabs Cross
Merchant Navy
Sands of Mali
CARTIER STAYER
Holdthasigreen
Kew Gardens
Stradivarius
Vazirabad
CARTIER TWO-YEAR-OLD COLT
Advertise
Quorto
Ten Sovereigns
Too Darn Hot
CARTIER TWO-YEAR-OLD FILLY
Fairyland
Hermosa
Pretty Pollyanna
Skitter Scatter
In addition to the eight equine awards, the Cartier/Daily Telegraph Award of Merit goes to the person or persons who, in the opinion of the special 15-strong Cartier Jury, has/have done the most for European racing and/or breeding either over their lifetime or within the past 12 months. The 10 latest recipients have been Sir Michael Stoute, Aidan O’Brien, Jack Berry, Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Jim Bolger, Team Frankel, Barry Hills, Richard Hannon, John Oxx and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
