Photo:

Eclipse Sportswire – edited

Kenny McPeek’s decision to send Thorpedo Anna against males
next weekend in the Grade 1, $1.25 million Travers Stakes has been hailed as a
shot in the arm for racing. But how big will it be?

McPeek has taken this path before, successfully running
Swiss Skydiver against the boys in 2020, when she won the COVID-delayed
Preakness.

Click here for Saratoga entries and results.

A win in the Travers not only would fortify Thorpedo Anna’s
case to be horse of the year, it would put her on the short list of U.S. fillies
and mares who made big strides when they stepped outside the distaff division
in the 21st century.

In the old David Letterman style of inverse order, here is a
top seven:

7. Havre de Grace. One of the most forgotten horse-of-the-year
winners, Havre de Grace franked her 2011 championship when Ramón Domínguez rode
her past Todd Pletcher’s pacesetting pair Rule and Mission Impazible to win as
the 2-1 favorite in the Woodward (G1) at Saratoga. Owned by Rick Porter’s Fox
Hill Farms and trained by Larry Jones, the 4-year-old daughter of Saint Liam
also had Grade 1 victories against females in the Apple Blossom and Beldame. In
spite of two Eclipse Awards, Breeders’ Cup success eluded Havre de Grace, who
was third in what is now the Distaff in 2010 and fourth against males in the
2011 Classic.

6. Rags to Riches. The highly regarded 3-year-old
class of 2007 produced horse of the year Curlin, Kentucky Derby winner Street
Sense and world-ranked sprinter Hard Spun. Rags to Riches also was in that crop,
making her mark as the first filly in 102 years to win the Belmont Stakes.
Owned by Coolmore’s Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith and trained by Todd
Pletcher, the daughter of A.P. Indy went eyeball to eyeball with Curlin down
the stretch under John Velázquez before prevailing by a head. It proved to be
her final win. After finishing second three months later in the Gazelle (G1),
Rags to Riches suffered the first of two injuries to her right pastern. The
Eclipse Award winner was retired in the spring of 2008.

5. Swiss Skydiver. Her Preakness victory in the fall
of 2020 provided a ray of positive news during the gloom of COVID. It actually
was the second of three times the WinStar-bred, Peter Callahan-owned filly
would face males. The daughter of Daredevil took a three-stakes winning streak
into the Blue Grass (G2) at Keeneland that summer and finished second in a
field of 13. A return to intra-gender competition resulted in a victory in the
Alabama (G1) and runner-up finish in the Kentucky Oaks (G1). That emboldened
McPeek to take a shot against 10 boys in the Preakness, where jockey Robby
Albarado piloted a first-place finish by a neck against eventual horse of the
year Authentic. After a 3 1/2-month break in the middle of her 4-year-old
season, the Eclipse Award winner finished fourth against four males in the
Whitney (G1) at Saratoga.

4. Beholder. She won 13 of her first 18 races,
including two Breeders’ Cups. Beholder then was sent by trainer Richard
Mandella into the 2015 Pacific Classic (G1). Sent off as a 2-1 favorite, the
5-year-old Henny Hughes mare owned by the late B. Wayne Hughes’s Spendthrift
Farm proved too much for the nine males who tried to keep up with her. Gary
Stevens rode to an 8 1/4-length triumph, making Beholder the only female ever
to win Del Mar’s signature race. An illness kept her out of the 2015 Breeders’
Cup Classic. She tried to repeat in the 2016 Pacific Classic, but she finished
a distant second to California Chrome. It might not have been against the boys,
but Beholder punctuated her career memorably that fall with a thrilling duel to
victory against Songbird in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Santa Anita. The
four-time Eclipse Award winner was voted into the Hall of Fame two years ago.

3. Tepin. After 14 races and two Grade 1 victories against
her gender, Tepin was given the opportunity to challenge males in the 2015 Breeders’
Cup Mile. In the 12-horse field that lined up at Keeneland, the daughter of
Bernstein who cost owner Bat Masterson $140,000 at a yearling sale won by 2 1/4
lengths. The win with her regular jockey Julien Leparoux cemented the first of
Tepin’s two Eclipse Awards as the top grass mare. In 2016 trainer Mark Casse took
the champion across the Atlantic for a victory against the boys in the Queen
Anne (G1) at Royal Ascot. After a three-month break, Tepin added a victory in
the Woodbine Mile (G1), giving her three top-level wins against males in as
many different countries. Her career ended with a runner-up finish that fall in
the Breeders’ Cup Mile. A year later Tepin was sold for $8 million. In 2022 she
was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

2. Rachel Alexandra. Wins in the Preakness and the Haskell,
both against 3-year-old males, already were ample evidence of Rachel
Alexandra’s success. Trainer Steve Asmussen went one better, though, in the
summer of 2009. He sent the daughter of Medaglia d’Oro against older males in the
Woodward (G1) at Saratoga. In a grueling test, she and jockey Calvin Borel outlasted
deep-closing Macho Again to win the 1 1/8-mile race by a head. None of this
would have happened if breeder Dolphus Morrison had not sold Rachel Alexandra.
But after a 20 1/4-length runaway in the Kentucky Oaks (G1), Jess Jackson’s
Stonestreet Stables bought her with the expressed intention of getting her out
of her divisional comfort zone. After the Woodward, Jackson said it was his
disdain for synthetic tracks that kept him from racing Rachel in the Breeders’
Cup at Santa Anita against the likes of Zenyatta. After three losses in five
starts as a 4-year-old, Rachel was retired. A two-time Eclipse winner, she was
inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2016.

1. Zenyatta. “This is un-be-liev-able.” That was
Trevor Denman’s indelible call at Santa Anita in 2009 when deep-closing
Zenyatta rallied from last place and more than 15 lengths behind to become the
first and still only filly or mare to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Her
19-race winning streak also included a victory in the 2008 running of what is
now the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. Most of the success that earned her four Eclipse
Awards came with jockey Mike Smith against females on the Southern California
synthetic surfaces of that era. But the daughter of Street Cry who was owned by
Jerry and Ann Moss and trained by John Shirreffs also was a two-time winner of
the Apple Blossom (G1) in 2008 and 2010 on real dirt. Her loss by a head to
Blame in the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs kept her from
retiring undefeated, but her comeback that night from more than 16 lengths back
might have been her greatest performance. That was when Zenyatta was 6 and became
horse of the year on her way to the Hall of Fame.

In Horse Racing Nation’s informal Thursday poll on X,
Zenyatta got more than half the votes as the favorite story this century of a filly
or mare vs. boys.

As suggested in comments that went with the poll, honorable
mention went to three Europe-based females. Goldikova scored an unprecedented
three-peat in the Breeders’ Cup Mile between 2008 and 2010, earning two Eclipse
Awards and a U.S. hall-of-fame induction before she died in 2016 at age 21.
Enable in 2018 was the first and still only horse of either gender to complete
the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (G1)-Breeders’ Cup Turf double in the same year.
Found had her first top-level breakthrough against males when she won the 2015 Breeders’
Cup Turf at Keeneland.

If Thorpedo Anna were to become the first filly since Lady Rotha in 1915 to win the Travers, she would vault
into the top six on this list, especially with the case she would make for
championship honors this winter.

Of course, all this is subject to lively debate.