TOP 10: LADY’S SECRET (The Tiny Champion, Iron Lady)
The tiny champion of Secretariat, Lady’s Secret showed racing fans that big things sometimes come in small packages. Her pace style was that of a front runner, and it earned her 25 wins in her 45-race career, with nine seconds and three thirds. Also known as “The Iron Lady”, Lady’s Secret was an unstoppable force when pitted against other fillies, and extremely competitive against males as well.
Lady’s Secret had her first major win at age two in the Mocassin Stakes in 1984, and followed it up with three more big wins at age three, including two Grade I events. In 1986, she defeated the nation’s best male horses four times, winning ten graded stakes races of her fifteen starts that season. That same year, she also became the first female to win the Whitney Stakes since Gallorette in 1948, and she finished the season by winning the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. Her performance throughout the 1986 racing season earned her the Outstanding Older Female Horse award along with the prestigious Horse of the Year award from Eclipse.
Lady’s Secret is ranked 76th by Blood-Horse magazine in their list of the Top 100 U.S. Thoroughbred champions of the 20th Century. She was 14th among the 26 fillies and mares on the list. The Iron Lady retired at age five in 1989 and produced 12 named foals, but none of them were particularly remarkable.
TOP 9: PERSONAL ENSIGN (The Great Undefeated Best Broodmare)
Personal Ensign was both a talented athlete and a prolific broodmare, finishing her career undefeated in 1988 with 13 wins before going on to produce nine great foals. She was the first notable American racehorse to go undefeated her entire career since Colin in 1908.
Personal Ensign won her first race in 1986 at two years old with a late burst of speed that resulted in a win by 12 ¾ lengths, but she was tested in her second race, winning by a head. After these two races, she suffered a fractured pastern that nearly ended her career, but she bounced back from surgery as fast as ever. She was known for having amazing races even against male horses, such as her victory in the prestigious Whitney Handicap in 1988. Her 1988 Breeders’ Cup Distaff race was noteworthy because of her incredibly close victory over Kentucky Derby winner Winning Colors, an amazing finish that was ranked 42nd in Horse Racing’s Top 100 Moments compiled by The Blood-Horse.
She won the American champion older female horse award in 1988 from Eclipse and was inducted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame in 1993. Personal Ensign was rated #48 among the top 100 American racehorses and ranked fourth among the 26 fillies and mares of the 20th century by a panel of experts assembled by The Blood-Horse.
Personal Ensign never stopped impressing people even in retirement. Nine of her ten named foals started and won, and she was named the 1996 Kentucky Broodmare of the Year. She was an alpha mare in the Phipps broodmare band and possessed a strong protective instinct towards her foals. She survived a potentially lethal case of peritonitis in 1996.
TOP 8: MIESQUE (The Back-to-Back Breeder’s Cup Mile Champion)
The fleet-footed Miesque was the kind of racehorse that you couldn’t take your eyes off of or you might miss an unexpected burst of speed that would change the entire race. She was the first horse to ever win two consecutive Breeders’ Cup races, a feat that’s even more impressive when you consider that she was up against a strong field of older males that included Warning, Bet Twice (a Belmont Stakes winner), and Steinlen in her second Breeders’ Cup. She was also a Group One/Grade I (G1) winner at two, three, and four years old, for a total of 10 G1 wins.
Miesque’s wins earned her the champion miler and three-year-old champion filly awards in France and England. She was inducted into the American Racing Hall of Fame in 1999, and she ranked 82nd among the greatest American racehorses of the 20th century and 19th among the 26 fillies and mares of the 20th century by an expert panel convened by The Blood-Horse.
Aside from being a great racer, Miesque was also a successful broodmare, producing five stakes’ winners, including French Classic winners Kingmambo and East of the Moon.
TOP 7: RACHEL ALEXANDRA (Beauty and Muscle)
Rachel Alexandra came from rocky beginnings before rising to greatness, culminating in an undefeated 2009 racing season and being named American Horse of the Year. Her amazing season in 2009 was one of the best ever seen from a 3-year-old filly, and she was the only 3-year-old filly to win the Horse of the Year award since the Eclipse Awards began in 1971. Out of 19 starts, she had 13 wins, five seconds, and just one major loss, when she took sixth in her first maiden race in 2008.
As a foal, Rachel Alexandra was rejected by her dam right after birth, and Rachel’s owner, Dolphus C. Morrison, described her as ““a little raw-boned and a little scruffy.” She was almost included in the 2006 Keeneland November Sale as a weanling due to her physical appearance. Fortunately, X-rays revealed a “minor development problem”, and Morrison scratched her from the sale, believing that she wouldn’t fetch the $125,000 that he thought she was worth. Instead, she was sent to Diamond D Ranch in Lone Oak, Texas, where Jimmy “Scooter” Dodwell broke her in. Morrison asked Dodwell if Rachel was ready to be entered in a Florida sale in 2007, and Dodwell described her as having “a ton of speed, with a long stride”, and recommended that she wasn’t sold. His judgement came at a crucial time and gave Rachel Alexandra the chance she needed to earn glory on the racetrack.
Rachel started her career with the jockey Brian Hernandez Jr., earning just two wins out of five races, before switching to the jockey Calvin Borel. Under Borel, her performance improved dramatically; he rode her to 9 consecutive wins, and she never finished below second place again. After her remarkable 2009 season, Rachel had a comparatively average record in 2010 with 2 wins and 3 seconds, and she was retired after 5 races that year.
In addition to being the first 3-year-old filly to receive Horse of the Year, Rachel Alexandra was also the first filly to win the Preakness Stakes race in 85 years (the last filly to win was Nellie Morse in 1924). She won races in six states (Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey), on eight different tracks, against fillies and Grade 1 colts and older horses, achieving a long string of consecutive wins, including numerous Grade 1 stakes. She was inducted into the Fair Grounds Racing Hall of Fame in 2011 and the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 2016.
TOP 6: FLIGHTLINE (The UDEFEATED with Great Margins)
Flightline could be described as one of the fastest horses in history. The blazingly fast bay ran undefeated throughout his entire racing career with an average winning margin of 10.125 lengths. Flightline’s short but memorable career included winning the Grade I Malibu Stakes in 2021 and the Metropolitan Handicap, Pacific Classic, and Breeders’ Cup Classic in 2022. His incredible victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic by 8 ¼ lengths was the largest winning margin in the history of the race. In the 2022 Longines World’s Best Racehorse Rankings, he was given a rating of 139, the highest ever awarded to a runner on the dirt, beating Cigar’s rating of 135.
Flightline was an undeniably fast horse on the racetrack, and his trainer, John W. Sadler, joked that he only lost to inanimate objects like a door latch or a wall. An energetic horse, especially in his youth, Flightline wanted to run at full speed all the time but was also prone to small accidents. The most serious accident happened when he was two; he was startled while being saddled for a training session and hit himself on a stall latch, leaving an L-shaped scar on his right hip near the tail.
The white spots on Flightline’s neck are from a port that was placed for antibiotics during recovery, which prevented him from racing as a two-year-old. He also suffered a hoof crack that interrupted his three-year-old season followed later by a strained hock that delayed the start of his four-year-old campaign. Despite his status as a talented racehorse, he could be clumsy in a unique way.