I never saw the champion race mare Ruffian run, unless you count old videos form the seventies of the day she broke down in a match race with the Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure. I have to imagine the Unite States Champion mare, okay California’s darling, Zenyatta,
would be a Ruffian type mare.
I mean a run your heart out, dance it up in the paddock kind of thoroughbred. Zenyatta always had those muscular legs kicking and prancing, a real show off. She was like that in the paddock, but once she hit the dirt track of Santa Anita and had some sand hit her in the face she was a monster, gobbling up ground, ready to take on the boys after she destroyed every female horse in Southern California in 2009. She beat some of the greatest colts In the country and from Europe to in the 2009 Breeders Cup Classic at Santa Anita, and she was always, well almost always the first on the wire.
Zenyatta won 20 of 21 races, a record we thought modern day horse racing may never see again, that is until two years later.
Black Caviar was just a foal skipping through the green grass pastures of her native Australia when Zenyatta was kicking ass in California in 2009 and 2010. I would never have imagined that just two years after Zenyatta’s reign we would see another horse, and female at that, who was getting ready to tie Zenyatta’s record.
Ruffian was an amazing race filly and some say that she is the greatest filly to ever race. She won her first ten races, setting a track record in two stakes races and setting a new Stakes record in her eight Stakes wins.
Ruffian only lost her last race, against Foolish Pleasure, when she broke both sesamoid bones in her front leg. The jockey absolutely could not pull up the fast filly, she would not stop running and she destroyed her leg. Tragically she had to be put down.
Serena’s Song is a far happier story of one of the best race mare’s I have ever seen race. Serena’s Song won seventeen graded stakes races in her career. Most mares these days will never even race seventeen times! When Serena’s Song was three, she won nine of thirteen races, including the Jim Beam Stakes and Haskell Invitational where she beat the colts in both races.
Most horse racing fan’s consider Man O War to be the best race horse to ever live. He won twenty of twenty one races in the 1920’s. Man O War won the Preakness Stakes and than the Belmont Stakes by twenty lengths. Man O War’s last race was a match race against the great Sir Barton, that he won easily, being pulled up to win by seven lengths. He would go on to sir some of the greatest horses racing had ever seen. Sea Biscuit and Tiz Now’s bloodlines can be traced back to the great Man O War.
All those horses were truly champions but today I watched an exceptional filly run a great race.
This was a filly, not an amazon, Zenyatta, looking for a fight.
This was a beautiful sinewy girl horse from Australia, and she just won eighteen of eighteen races, well on her way to tying Zenyatta’s United States record.
What’s amazing about this filly, Black Caviar is that she has beaten the boys seventeen times.
As I sat watching this Stakes race from Australia tonight, the brilliant filly Black Caviar went off at odds of 1-9 and her nearest opponent is 70-1! I have never seen a horse race run where every other horse in the race is going off at 99-1! She ran against eight male horses, one of those male horses won the Melbourne Cup a few years ago, Australia’s premier horse racing event! I had a strong feeling that the people offering expert horse racing tips in australia would have anticipated her extraordinary performance at the race and already gotten all bets placed on her.
As I watched the great race mare warm up on the turf course before the race I was truly blown away by what a beautiful filly she is. 200,000 Australians turned out to see her race, all holding pink flags, the color of her jockeys silks. They put a padded barrier blanket on Black Caviar as they led her into the starting gate, a trick they use every time she races to calm her as she enters the gate. Black Caviar’s jockey threw a thumbs up at the crowd before the race as the great filly was led into the starting gate.
The gates opened and Australia’s equine wonder was out and running. She held fourth and dawdling in the beginning, her lovely muscular neck bowed as the jockey held her back. She was merly idling as those hooves crushed into that thick Aussie grass. The finish line was just three furlongs ahead as she made her way up on the outside of the field and she was not challenged, these male stallions to be can not challenge the great race mare today.
The pride of Australia won easily, streaking ahead to win by three lengths, her jockey in pink, like a statue on her back. She won so easily, they say she will run her back in a week’s time. Than another race two weeks after that. Black Caviar’s trainer wants her to set the record in Australia for her fan’s. than head to Dubai to face some of the greatest race horses in the world in Dubai’s Golden Shaheen.
Black Caviar is so amazing, in the United States, these days, race horses race maybe once a month. People don’t care about breaking records these days in the States; all they think about is keeping the horse sound, to be able to breed them in the future and how much money they are worth.
How can you not love this filly? It’s so exciting every time she runs, and I have finger’s crossed that she will stay unbeaten, and this Fall be shipped to California for the Breeder’s Cup at Santa Anita, where I can dream that maybe I will get to see her live.