Brad Cox did not have his best year in 2024.
A slightly down season for Cox lies beyond the wildest dreams of most Thoroughbred horse trainers.
Cox won 243 races, fourth most among North American trainers. He ranked third in earnings with $28.3 million, about $8.5 million more than Todd Pletcher’s next-highest total, and won 33 graded stakes, second only to Chad Brown’s 47 during the season.
Cox knocked out six Grade 1s with three horses, below his peak, but two of those horses, Idiomatic and Immersive, are Eclipse Award finalists, Idiomatic the leader in the clubhouse for older female, Immersive a deserving unanimous choice as 2-year-old filly champ.
Cox has a second finalist in the juvenile filly division, unbeaten Good Cheer, and won the Grade 2 Demoiselle in December with undefeated Muhimma. If there were a futures market for winning trainer of the 2025 Kentucky Oaks, Cox would hold heavy favoritism.
:: Full list of 2024 Eclipse Awards finalists, including profile stories
Beyond Bob Baffert, Cox seems to have no peer in training dirt-route runners, and all but one of his Grade 1s during 2024 came in that category. Highland Falls, who won the Jockey Club Gold Cup, joined Idiomatic and Immersive. In fact, among Cox’s 33 graded wins, 22 came in dirt routes. His horses, steeled through morning training, don’t appear to tire when they lead, and they keep coming, relentlessly, when they rally.
Cox opened a Payson Park division in Florida late last year. He’s in New York, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana, spread all over the country this winter, still winning during 2024 at a remarkable 26 percent clip on volume. Cox was champion trainer already in 2020 and 2021. The prospects, from Godolphin, from Juddmonte, from all over the place, keep coming down the pipeline. Cox knows what to do with them. His second Eclipse wouldn’t be his last.
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