Breeders' Cup trophies

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The Breeders’ Cup Trophy is an authentic and totally faithful bronze reproduction of the Torrie horse. The original was created in Florence, Italy by Giovanni da Bologna, around the late 1580s. Each year the Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships award to the winner of each of 14 races a garland of flowers draped over the withers of the winning horse and four Breeders' Cup Trophy presented to the connections of the winners.

Torrie horse

The Torrie horse or Mattei horse is a bronze Renaissance anatomical sculpture of a horse, created in Florence by Giambologna in the 1580s.

Breeders Cup Grade I Thoroughbred horse racing

The Breeders' Cup World Championships is an annual series of Grade I Thoroughbred horse races, operated by Breeders' Cup Limited, a company formed in 1982. From its inception in 1984 through 2006, it was a single-day event; starting in 2007, it expanded to two days. All sites have been in the United States, except in 1996, when the races were at the Woodbine Racetrack in Canada.

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"Breeders' Cup Trophy" is presented to the winner of every Breeders' Cup race Breeders Cup Winning Trophy.jpg
"Breeders' Cup Trophy" is presented to the winner of every Breeders' Cup race

Early history

The horse is an ecorche, showing the muscles of the animal in detail. Its original purpose is unknown, but it may have been made as a study for the equestrian statue of Duke Cosimo I of Florence, cast in 1591. It has stood in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence since that date. The ecorche character gives the sculpture clarity and precision, combined with the grace and beauty of the living animal. This is evidence of a scientific as well as an artistic intention on the part of the artist and reveals the importance to him of the influence and example of Leonardo da Vinci. The most recent monumental equestrian sculpture in Florence, before that of Duke Cosimo I, had been da Vinci’s never-completed monument to Giangiacomo Trivulzio. The Torrie horse bears a close relationship to several drawings by da Vinci related to this project in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor. [1]

Cosimo I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany Duke of Florence

Cosimo I de' Medici was the second Duke of Florence from 1537 until 1569, when he became the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, a title he held until his death.

Piazza della Signoria square in Florence, Italy

Piazza della Signoria is an L-shaped square in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy. It was named after the Palazzo della Signoria, also called Palazzo Vecchio. It is the main point of the origin and history of the Florentine Republic and still maintains its reputation as the political focus of the city. It is the meeting place of Florentines as well as the numerous tourists, located near Palazzo Vecchio and Piazza del Duomo and gateway to Uffizi Gallery.

Leonardo da Vinci Italian Renaissance polymath

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, more commonly Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian polymath of the Renaissance whose areas of interest included invention, drawing, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and he is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter, and tank, he epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal.

Other artists, too, knew and learned from da Vinci’s study of the horse, but none came so close as Giovanni da Bologna to his vision of the beauty of the animal celebrated by art and science together. The original ecorche bronze horse of Giovanni da Bologna is part of the University of Edinburgh Fine Art Collection in Scotland. The Edinburgh horse was acquired by Sir James Erskine of Torrie from the Villa Mattei in Rome, Italy in 1803. He bequeathed it to the University of Edinburgh with the rest of his collection of old master paintings and bronzes, and it came into the possession of the university in 1836. [1]

University of Edinburgh public research university in Edinburgh, Scotland

The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1582, is the sixth oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's ancient universities. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city of Edinburgh, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university. The university played an important role in leading Edinburgh to its reputation as a chief intellectual centre during the Age of Enlightenment, and helped give the city the nickname of the Athens of the North.

Current History

The Breeders’ Cup Trophy was cast from the original and was directly supervised and approved by the University of Edinburgh for the exclusive use of Breeders’ Cup Limited. The largest version of the trophy is permanently owned by the Breeders’ Cup Ltd, which displays it annually at the World Throughbred Championships venue. Replicas are presented to the owners of the winners of each of the Breeders’ Cup World Championships races every year. The breeders, trainers and jockeys of each winning horse also are presented with replicas of the Breeders’ Cup Trophy.

Breeders Cup Blanket & Bouquet is draped over the winner of each Breeders' Cup race winner. Breeders cup flowers-2.jpg
Breeders Cup Blanket & Bouquet is draped over the winner of each Breeders' Cup race winner.

In 1984 equestrian sculptor Irene French of Dorset, England was commissioned to sculpt an 11 inch high replica of the ‘Torrie Horse’. She completed this commission in 6 weeks. It was then cast in bronze by the Morris Singer Bronze Foundry of Basingstoke, England. This became the trophy for the American Breeders Cup, awarded annually to the winners of each of the Breeders Races. The Torrie bronze was thought to have been used to teach equine anatomy in the Middle Ages. It is said that the artist George Stubbs used the classic stance of the Torrie Horse to best display the muscles in his famous equine anatomical drawings.

Blanket of Flowers

Following a precedent started almost one hundred years ago, many of this country's highly esteemed grade one races award of a blanket of flowers draped over the withers of the winning horse. In the Breeders' Cup all 14 division races are adorned with this time honored tradition.

The Official Flower Garland Provider of the Breeders’ Cup is Kroger Floral Design Center, located in Louisville, Kentucky, it creates each of the 14 Championship race garlands.

The official blanket of flower garland is made of the rare combinations of Beauty Asters, Golden Asters, Cremons and Catteleya Orchids, which are grown exclusively for the Breeders’ Cup. The Kroger Floral Design Center has created the garlands since 1988. They have silk replicas of the official Breeders’ Cup flower garland, at the Breeders’ Cup Racing Office at (859) 514-9422.

Each blanket has two wide saddle bag ends in an elongated pentagon shape that are adorned with a large purple circle emboldened with the Breeders' Cup logo and an embroidered script with the name of the race that was just won. The blanket is narrowed in the middle at the neck for ease of display over the horse and is topped with a full bouquet of both color Chrysanthemums with other floral embellishments. The blanket is 96" long from one end to the other.

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<i>Horse and Rider</i> (Leonardo da Vinci) sculpture attributed to Leonardo da Vinci

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References

  1. 1 2 Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships 2008 Media Guide, General Information, page 7.