The Breeders’ Cup Writing Awards honor excellence in coverage of the Breeders’ Cup World Championships. There are two awards that will celebrate outstanding writing:

-The Joe Hirsch Award for Outstanding News Reporting

-The Bill Leggett Award for Outstanding Feature Writing

These awards are based on coverage of the 2021 (last year’s) Breeders’ Cup World Championships.

To enter the competition for these awards, contestants may submit a maximum of one submission per category: a choice from 2021 in Outstanding News reporting, and a choice from 2021 for Outstanding Feature writing. Please note that two submissions in one category from the same year will not be accepted.

 Deadline for entry is Monday, October 3, 2022 

Joe Hirsch Award for Outstanding News Reporting

This competition is open to those affiliated with a newspaper, magazine, or internet site. The submissions for the Joe Hirsch Award for Outstanding News Reporting are limited to a maximum of one submission. The submission must be a focused recap article of a 2021 Breeders’ Cup World Championships race. Your submitted article can be from a Breeders’ Cup race that took place on Friday, Nov. 5, or from a Breeders Cup race that took place on Saturday, Nov. 6, 2021. Please include a timestamp web link to your article. (It is understood that an article submitted under deadline circumstances may not have been posted by editors in a timely manner.)

Bill Leggett Award for Outstanding Feature Writing

The competition is open to those affiliated with a newspaper, magazine, or internet site. The submissions for the Bill Leggett Award for Outstanding Feature Writing are limited to a maximum of one article. Your submission must be focused on a feature aspect of the 2021 Breeders’ Cup: an advance story on a race, an individual profile, a column, or a business article. Please also include the publication date of your article.

The winners of these awards will be announced at the National Turf Writers And Broadcasters Annual Awards Dinner on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2022 in Lexington, Ky.

Submission Instructions

There are two steps: 1) Cover Letter and 2) Clean Documents for Judging

1)  Cover letter. Write an email cover letter to jim@breederscup.com

a)  Indicate the category for competition (News Reporting or Feature)

b)  Name of publication

c)  Headline of article

d)  Include a web link to the article in your cover letter. The link is not for judging purposes, just proof of published work. We need a clean Word document for judging. 

2) Attach your Clean Documents of your submissions in Microsoft Word document or a similar format. Please do not submit an open document in an email. For a News Reporting submission, please place a timestamp at the top of the article. For Feature Reporting submissions, please place the date of publication. However, do not place your byline or the name of your publication in any of your clean documents that will be judged.

Submission deadline is Monday, Oct. 3, 2022.