There are no specific criteria to decide a year’s best stakes races because betting on horses is as subjective as it gets. This solitary pursuit intrigues millions around the world, mingling analysis, anticipation, disappointment, and, every so often, exultation.
Often, the races that stand out are the ones that produce parimutuel profits, the reward for being right. For most horseplayers, it’s all about the bottom line, but there’s a time to try to be objective, to step back and look at the big picture. It’s challenging, but it’s fun, too. Here’s one veteran handicapper’s take on the Top 10 races of 2025.
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Trainer Willie Mullins is the longtime king of steeple chasing in Ireland and England. Rarely do his runners offer 27-1 odds, Ethical Diamond’s price when he upset the Turf with a last-to-first, extremely wide run under Dylan Browne McMonagle. The 5-year-old gelding had never run in a graded stakes, and half of his lifetime starts had come over jumps.
The next day, the Gosdens produced an unexpected encore at the royal meeting with a 7-1 Ombudsman. Despite being blocked repeatedly, he shot to the lead with 100 yards to run and won going away by two lengths.
Field of Gold dominated like a 4-5 favorite should, crushing the St. James’s Palace by 3½ lengths on opening day at Royal Ascot for trainers John and Thady Gosden.
Barred from the Arc because he’s a gelding, France’s Calandagan traveled 6,000 miles to earn his fourth straight Group 1. Far back early, he rallied wide to score by a nose for trainer Francis-Henri Graffard and jockey Mickael Barzalona, who also had teamed to win the Arc.
Longshot Daryz (12-1) took a tight photo from the favored Irish filly Minnie Hauk at Longchamp in Europe’s most important race. Minnie Hauk had won five consecutive stakes for trainer Aidan O’Brien.
In a clash of globetrotting titans, Forever Young surged in the deep stretch to retake the lead from Hong Kong-based Romantic Warrior, who was making his main-track debut. For once, the call “a stretch duel for the ages” wasn’t hyperbole.
After skipping the Preakness, Sovereignty left no doubt about who was the 3-year-old king. He overpowered Journalism inside the eighth pole and drew away by three lengths.
Beaten Derby favorite Journalism redeemed himself with an impossibly dramatic late burst. Blocked and trailing Gosger by five lengths in the midstretch, he bulled his way out of trouble and got up in the final strides.
After a fever forced Sovereignty to scratch, it felt as if the year’s grand finale would be an anticlimax. Not so. Against a deep, talented field, Forever Young again showed he’s one of the millennium’s standouts, aided by Ryusei Sakai’s heady ride. Maybe he could have upset a healthy Sovereignty, but we’ll never know.
Rarely does the Kentucky Derby showcase dominance the way this one did. Sovereignty’s 7.98-1 odds showed he had many doubters, but his powerful surge from far back announced the emergence of a superstar.
Ed McNamara is an award-winning racing writer who has covered the sport since 1981 for The Bergen (N.J.) Record, Newsday, ESPN, Thorocap, and USRacing. He is the author of Cajun Racing: From the Bush Tracks to the Triple Crown and Racing Around the World, and a contributor to The Most Glorious Crown and The Racetracks of America. He has also written for racing publications in France and Italy.
