Imperatriz a deserved Horse of the Year winner

Imperatriz won several big sprint races in Australia. / Racing Photos

The biggest certainty of the racing season was saluted last night when Imperatriz was crowned Horse of the Year.

The magnificent sprinting mare won the supreme title at the awards dinner in Hamilton, as well as Sprinter-Miler and the Outstanding Global Achievement award.

The win comes after Imperatriz was narrowly pipped by Sharp ‘N’ Smart for the title last year but she completely dominated the voting after a string of Group 1 sprinting victories across the Tasman last season, beating the Australians at what they do best.

Imperatriz was retired in April and sold at auction to Australian breeding giant Yulong and will soon by served by stallion Pierata.

She secured the premier title by 41 votes to nine over Orchestral, with Legarto receiving one vote in voting that summed up the night: every flat racing category was won by a female galloper.

Orchestral’s connections didn’t go home empty-handed, though, as the exceptional filly not only won Three-Year-Old of the Year but also Stayer of the Year, somewhat surprisingly beating Mahrajaan, who won both the New Zealand and Auckland Cups.

Orchestral won the 3-year-old title 54-2 over Crocetti but the voting in the stayers’ category was much closer, the filly taking the decision 31 votes to 24 over Mahrajaan, her single win in the 2201m-plus distance range being the New Zealand Derby.

Another filly almost equalled Orchestral for the easiest winner of the night, with Velocious taking the juvenile trophy with 52 votes, with Captured By Love and Move To Strike getting one vote each.

Legarto won champion middle distance horse with 33 votes to Campionessa’s 20.

West Coast won Jumper of the Year, while in the closest vote of the evening Portia Matthews won Jumps Jockey of the Year over Shaun Fannin 29-26.

The prestigious Jockey of the Year went to Warren Kennedy, his season-long heroics ending in a premiership win and the voted-on jockeys’ title 34 to 15 over Opie Bosson.

Trainer of the Year went to Mark Walker and Sam Bergerson, while in a huge night for Te Akau, two of their biggest owners, John Elstob and Denise Bassett, won Owners of the Year.

Joanne Pearson, who works for trainer Lisa Latta, won the Stablehand of the Year title, while Sam Mynott won the Newcomer to Training.

Among the night’s most popular winners were training couple Peter and Dawn Williams, who won the Outstanding Contribution award.

The couple retired from training last season after four decades, during which then won an Auckland Cup with Sea Swift when they were training out of Ashburton.

They went out on a high by claiming the $1 million Elsdon Park Aotearoa Classic at Ellerslie with Desert Lightning in one of the last major races they contested.

Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.