The Breeders’ Cup Writing Awards honor excellence in coverage of the Breeders’ Cup World Championships, and entries are being taken now.

These awards are based on written coverage of the 2016 (last year’s) Breeders’ Cup World Championships. There are two awards:

-The Joe Hirsch Award for Outstanding News Reporting

-The Bill Leggett Award for Outstanding Feature Writing

To enter the competition for these awards, contestants may enter one submission per category.

Deadline for Entry is Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017. Here are the awards criteria.

Submissions for the Joe Hirsch Award for Outstanding News Reporting must be a focused recap story of a 2016 Breeders’ Cup World Championships race written and posted on the night of the race. Time zone differences are taken into consideration regarding posting of the article.   The competition is open to those affiliated with a newspaper, magazine or an internet site.

Submissions for the Bill Leggett Award for Outstanding Feature Writing - either in hard copy publications or posted on the internet - must be focused on some aspect of the 2016 Breeders’ Cup: an advance story on a race, an individual profile, a column, or a business article on the organization and structure of the event.

The winners of these awards will be announced at the National Turf Writers And Broadcasters Dinner on Thursday, Nov. 2 at The Brigantine, the iconic restaurant overlooking Del Mar.

Submission instructions are as follows. Follow both instructions.

1)    Write an email cover letter to jim@breederscup.com  with your attached article stating the:

a) Category for competition (News Reporting or Feature)

b) Name of publication

c) Headline of Article

c) Publication Date and Time of the Article  

2)    Submit your entry via email in an attached Word document or a similar format to jim@breederscup.com. Submit the entry without your name or your publication in the document to be judged.

Please submit your entry by Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017.

Edited Breeders' Cup release