Mike Smith wins second straight Bill Shoemaker award
ARCADIA, California (AP) — Mike Smith won his second straight Bill Shoemaker award as the top jockey of the Breeders’ Cup.
He won the Marathon and Juvenile Turf on Friday and the Turf Sprint on Saturday, extending his record for most Cup wins by a jockey to 20. Smith also had second-, third- and fourth-place finishes in the two-day championships at Santa Anita.
The 48-year-old rider won with 37 points, four more than 50-year-old Gary Stevens, based on a scoring system that awards points for first through fourth-place finishes in the 14 Cup races.
“Winning it a second time means much more to me because it’s so much harder to do,” Smith said of the honour that began in 2003 and is named for the late Hall of Fame jockey. “As small as he was, he was a giant of a man on horseback and off.”
Stevens swept the Distaff and Classic races, and had two seconds and a third in his other races. He began a comeback in January after seven years in retirement.
The season-ending championships drew a two-day crowd total of 94,628, up from last year’s total of 89,742. Santa Anita is in the middle of a three-year run as the host site.
The two-day wagering total on the 14 Cup races was US$160,704,877, an 11 per cent increase over the US$144,272,332 total for the 2012 event.
