Pandemic Leads to a Virtual Reality for Eclipse Awards

About a year ago, Keith Chamblin was looking forward to celebrating a festive 50th edition of the Eclipse Awards in 2021.

A little less than three months later, he wondered if there would be awards to hand out.

"There was a point in late winter/early spring where we didn't know, and I'm not sure if the industry knew, whether we would have live racing past the end of March," said Chamblin, the COO of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and the senior executive producer of the Eclipse Awards. "We wondered what the year would look like and whether there would be Eclipse Awards to present in 2021."

But the show will indeed go on.

Thoroughbred racing's best and brightest of 2020 will be honored Jan. 28 in a unique manner no one could have envisioned a year ago. Instead of a glamorous, black tie event, the milestone 50th Annual Eclipse Awards Presented by Spendthrift Farm will be a virtual affair aired on TVG and Racetrack Television Network and streamed live on bloodhorse.com and other outlets, beginning at 8 p.m. ET. 

The format surely reflects the constraints of a world battling the COVID-19 pandemic while providing an underlying theme of how the tireless work by racetrack officials and horsemen to create and adhere to successful safety protocols for the past 10 months has allowed the sport to continue and offer major races through some extremely dark days.

"Obviously as we moved through the summer we realized, based on the calendar, it was going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to host the event live at Gulfstream Park as in past years, or anywhere for that matter in January and have attendees," Chamblin said. "In the fall we decided to have a virtual Eclipse Awards show.

"It's been a bit of a challenge."

Indeed it has.

What viewers will see Thursday night is the finished product of a massive undertaking that involved working more than 300 elements from remote locations into a single show whose script has been changed about a dozen times in the last few months to create the proper flow of events.

"It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle for the first time," Chamblin said.

Like the 49 ceremonies before it, the 2020 Eclipse Awards will feature the crowning of equine and human champions in 17 categories that will be topped off by adding another Horse of the Year to a regal list of past recipients. Yet the similarities with the past end there for co-producers Amy Zimmerman and G.D. Hieronymus, who have been charged with packaging hundreds of moving parts into one, cohesive, and entertaining show that will need between 90 and 120 minutes of air time.

"It's an exhaustive show," said Zimmerman, the Emmy and Eclipse Award-winning senior vice president and executive producer at Santa Anita Park. "The format of the show hasn't changed, just the execution of it."

The truth be told, Thursday's show will lack the beads of perspiration on the brow of finalists as they await the presenter's announcement of the champions. The bulk of the winners were contacted last week so that arrangements could be made to record an acceptance speech by a representative of the connections.

"We're not trying to fool anyone. We're in the midst of a pandemic. There are a lot of shows being taped and presented in a lot of different formats, and we're no different than other sports in having to present it to our fans this way," Chamblin said. "In some ways it will be advantageous, and in some ways it will be disappointing, but it is what it is. That's the reality of the situation and the environment we're in."

Even taping segments was a highly challenging chore for the production crew. In order to bring the show to life, it required the filming of 17 acceptance speeches; 17 readings of the finalists by the presenters; 17 introductions of the presenters; dozens of other lead-ins by Kenny Rice, who will serve as the emcee and "traffic cop" of the show; the announcement of the FanDuel Moment of the Year; segments to honor the winners of the six Media Eclipse Awards; clips of the equine champions in their current life at a farm or at the racetrack; an In Memoriam segment; Thomas Goldsmith honored with an Eclipse Award as the 2020 Horseplayer of the Year; a visit to presenting sponsor Spendthrift Farm with footage of the champion mare Beholder; and historical moments from the 50 years of the Eclipse Awards with a countdown of the fan vote for top 10 horses, trainers, and jockeys of the last five decades that was produced by Melanie Wignall of Wignall Productions. 

And the list of features and work to complete by Thursday night does not stop there.

"We're very lucky we're in the capable hands of our broadcast producers Amy Zimmerman and G.D. Hieronymus. They are consummate professionals, and we have an executive producer in Jim Gluckson who is a steady hand," Chamblin said. "The team has worked together for a long time, and it's all coming together. We're looking forward to a great event, but a different event. For the 50th anniversary we were looking forward to bringing back a lot of people from the past, like former hosts over the past 20 shows, but we'll tie them into the virtual show."

Aside from recipients and presenters, all in different locales, the show will bring together a bevy of key personalities working in unison as presenters while operating out of separate parts of the country.

Acacia Courtney and Gabby Gaudet are in Florida, with Jeannine Edwards and Britney Eurton from Spendthrift Farm in Kentucky, and Jay Privman and Gary Stevens in California. Kenny Mayne's segments were taped at ESPN in Connecticut. Rice will operate out of Studio46 in Lexington, the same place where Hieronymus and his team will face the imposing task of editing all of the video.

My glamorous co-host. #EclipseAwards Thurs night. @NTRA @BreedersCup @DRFInsidePost @spendthriftfarm pic.twitter.com/PtEQmGC1sP

— Jeannine Edwards (@jeanninee12) January 27, 2021

"Usually I'll weave the story of the show together, and the day of the show I'll handle the production in the truck and G.D. will work backstage," Zimmerman said. "It's generally a 50-50 workload or 60-40. This year's it's 75-25 for G.D. This year there's no stage, no truck. I assemble the elements and the flow, and G.D. and his team will have the Herculean task of putting it all together. G.D. will be doing the heavy lifting. He and his crew have to Frankenstein it together."

For Hieronymus, the show has been "a work in progress" for the last few weeks and has generated a great sense of pride in turning it into a reality.

"With a virtual show there are so many more elements. You want to keep people engaged, and I believe they will be," said Hieronymus, who is also completing his final week of work as the director of broadcast services for Keeneland. "It's all coming together, and there's a lot of pride in being able to have the show. For many years, I've been involved in a lot of events, and I always have some pride in this show, but there's more this year because of everything that went into it. I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished product."

The virtual format will quicken the pace of the show and in news that should bring a smile to the face of past recipients Sol Kumin and Chad Brown, there will not be a bandmaster to drown out lengthy speeches.

Tuxedo rentals in the Hallandale Beach area around Gulfstream Park and across the country also figure to be down this week without the formal dinner. Hieronymus said many of the recipients adopted a casual business look for their speeches.

"We'll be done in under two hours," said Hieronymus, who has been part of the Eclipse Awards for the last 35 years. "We don't have to wait for people to walk to the podium, and without a podium, speeches have been briefer. It's not a dinner where people start engaging and they see someone go long and they want to go long, too. Or there are other people on the stage who want to offer a few words and have something to say. Now it's basically a Zoom call acceptance speech, and everyone is coming in shorter and it's less formal."

Zimmerman likens her role to lining up the ingredients for a master chef.

"I was once told that building a show format is like putting together a symphony. Everything should flow from one element to the other until you reach the big crescendo, and I try to do that," she said. "It took a lot of time massaging everything that goes into it, and I'm up to my 12th version of how it should go. Horse of the Year anchors the program, but let's face it. There are some awards that are fairly obvious, especially this year. You want to lead in to your big moment properly."

Reflective of that, the show will close out with the announcement of the winners in some contentious categories, female turf, male turf, and owner, before Horse of the Year is revealed and the virtual curtain comes down.

After that, everyone associated with the show will breathe a collective sigh of relief that a massive project that could have easily and understandably been placed on hiatus for a year was completed to provide a sense of normalcy during the duress of the pandemic.

"The fact we were able to get in a Triple Crown season and the Breeders' Cup and have a year of racing with champions who can be honored with an Eclipse Award really is a credit to all of the individuals who worked day in and day out to care for these glorious animals that make our sport what it is. It was an amazing feat pulled off by everyone, including our customers who turned out and wagered just like they did in 2020," Chamblin said. "It's a credit to a lot of people because we wanted the show to go on. It went on at the racetrack and in the breeding shed, and we're thrilled to bring this show to fans Thursday night with the help of terrific support from more than 20 sponsors. Hopefully next year we'll return to South Florida and put on the Eclipse Awards like we did in the past and kick off the new racing season as we normally would."