Pondering the Dan Patch Driver of the Year battle amongst other human awards
by Brett Sturman
In projecting the Dan Patch awards that include in this column Driver of the Year, Trainer of the Year, and Rising Star, the most hotly contested one is that of the driver award. It looks like there’s only one direction to go in the trainer award, and the Rising Star award, as usual, could go any way due to the open-ended nature of it.
Beginning with the Driver of the Year, the award as determined by USHWA voting is going to come down to the top two drivers this year by earnings: Jason Bartlett and Dexter Dunn. Whereas Dunn has won the award every year since 2019, except for 2023, it would be Bartlett’s first time receiving the accolade. It’s a matter of not necessarily going to the best driver, but the driver with the best year.
It will always take a special season for any driver to get the award away from Dunn, and it looks like Bartlett may have cleared that benchmark in what was a career defining year for the 44-year-old driver based out of New York. To date, Bartlett leads all North American drivers with earnings of over $15.3 million and is second in the dash race with 729 wins only to Aaron Merriman. Bartlett also boasts an insanely high UDRS rating of 0.450. To Dunn’s credit as the top Grand Circuit performer, he has almost the same earnings as Bartlett ($14.8 million) in about half of the starts.
Bartlett’s success this year has been fueled by his dominance at Yonkers, where 511 of those wins have come at a 34 per cent success rate, as well as over $8.1 million in earnings. In the competitive driving colony there, Bartlett nearly doubles his closest competition in wins, where George Brennan and Jordan Stratton are a distant second and third with 226 and 225 wins, respectively. Bartlett’s UDRS rating from Yonkers alone is .483 – the numbers there are overwhelming.
Though aided at Yonkers somewhat by driving for the top barns, Bartlett’s season goes well past the Hilltop oval and goes past all the half-mile ovals, for that matter. It’s his success in addition to Yonkers that has warranted him the strong consideration for Driver of the Year, and that includes the breakthrough last month of not one, but two Breeders Crown wins – the first ones of his career.
Bartlett won the Breeders Crown 2-Year-Old Colt Trot with Spencer Hanover and Open Trot with French Wine. It was at that moment when Bartlett put an exclamation point on the dream season and to many where he staked his claim for Driver of the Year. Bartlett also drove top 3-year-old Dandy Ideal to three major stakes wins, won two Matron stakes at Dover, and the Blue Chip Matchmaker early in the season at Yonkers.
Dunn, on the other hand, feels like maybe a victim of his own success. If any other driver had the resume this year that Dunn has had, they’d be a no-brainer for Driver of the Year. The list of major stakes wins is too long to even list, but the success is obviously evident by the fact he’s racked up almost $15 million in earnings coming from just 275 wins – let’s just leave it at that.
It almost sounds absurd to say based on those numbers, but by his standards Dunn may have had a “down” year. When Dunn won the award last year for the fifth time, he did so with $16.7 million in earnings. Based on his record six Breeders Crown wins he had last year (this year he only had two) and horses he had coming back for this year, he looked positioned to stretch that number even higher. But whereas Dunn dominated last year, being over $2 million in earnings higher than his next closest competitor, this year he was second-best in that category.
Bartlett’s season has the feel of a blend between the award-winning seasons of Aaron Merriman from 2018 and Scott Zeron’s from 2023. In 2018, Merriman hustled his way to over 1,000 wins, over $10 million in purses, and picked up a couple of Grand Circuit wins to bolster his resume. Zeron in 2023 had a season with that same magical feel that Bartlett’s has.
A case could be made either way, but when all is voted on it’s likely that Bartlett will be awarded, rightfully so, for the standout season.
In the category for Trainer of the Year, this one may not be as close. Is there anyone other than Ron Burke to consider?
Thirteen years ago, it seemed surreal when the Hall of Fame trainer won $20 million in purses as a trainer. Having never looked back since that time, he’s reached that number every year except for the COVID season, and just two weeks ago broke his own record for earnings in a single season. As of this print, Burke stands at $29.8 in earnings on the 2025 season and is sure to cross over the ridiculous number of $30 million before year’s end.
Despite posting similar numbers through the years, the three-time award winning Burke hasn’t won the award since 2018. What will be the deciding edge this year are the top stars that he’s campaigned to go along with the numbers. That includes Horse of the Year contender Lexus Kody, divisional honor cinches of Loua Dipa and Louprint, divisional honor contender M-M’s Dream and Breeders Crown winner Sippinonsearoc, just to name a few. Like Dunn, the list is simply too vast to detail in full. Burke should carry the prize with relative ease.
The question of the Rising Star is always challenging because there’s not a hard or fast set of numbers to go by, and so I already apologize for anyone that I might be overlooking. But the first person that comes to mind for this year’s Rising Star would be that of driver Braxten Boyd.
Boyd was a key story this season, especially throughout June and July when he piloted longshot Madden Oaks to a memorable runner-up from post 10 in the North America Cup final, and then came back the following month at The Meadowlands to win the Meadowlands Pace in a second-placed-first time of 1:47.4. Exactly one week later, Boyd delivered another longshot in a Grand Circuit win with Binge On Yankee in the $250,000 Joe Gerrity at Saratoga.
The 25-year-old had a career season, where his $4.7 million in earnings is placed 23rd overall in North America. The earnings improved from last year’s figure of $4.3 million and the year before that one of $3.7 million.
An honorable mention should be given to Austin Hanners who is right up there with Boyd at over $4 million in earnings this year, to go with his first Breeders Crown win that came with Always B Naughty. He’s young and certainly up and coming too, but with the recent career trajectory and notoriety this year with Madden Oaks, Boyd would be my top-of-mind selection.
