"To me, it’s the most satisfying win I had," Pletcher said at Wednesday’s draw for Saturday’s 143rd Belmont in which he will run 20-1 shot Stay Thirsty. "To me, it was the most exciting race I won, just the stretch-long duel. When you look back it as far as fillies go and then you look at what she did in that race and what Curlin accomplished after that, to me it was as good as a filly has ever run."

“We’re going to shoot for the stars and who knows, maybe even give her a chance at Horse of the Year. If that means tackling the boys at some point this summer, that is a possibility too. There are not that many high-dollar filly races out there. She already has her grade I, so if someone offers us money to show up, we have that option. I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but we have big hopes for her.”

"The Breeders' Cup Distaff will be Blind Luck's ninth start in 2010 and she's run at seven different racetracks. She's won on dirt, on synthetic tracks, on fast surfaces, on sloppy surfaces. She's gone from California to Arkansas to Kentucky. She went back to California, then to Delaware and to Saratoga, then on to Philly Park. She's given away weight. She's taken on all comers. An $11,000 yearling purchase by Pollard's Vision, she has won five of eight starts and has earned $1,319,662 this year." It's reminiscent of Rachel Alexandra's 2009 campaign. Except for not racing in open company.

"First of all, the trainers were polled, and the collective memory of trainers like Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, Ben Jones, Bert Mulholland, and others stretched back a long way. For the most part, it didn’t go back to Imp or Miss Woodford, however. They were responding to the oral tradition of the best mares of the 19th century handed down to them as yardsticks by their mentors. Second, that Miss Woodford -- nearly three-quarters of a century after she was born -- was considered fifth-best is staggering. That is serious respect."

"How would you, learned readers, compile a list of the greatest mares of the past 100 years? And which fillies and mares would be on your list? That pair of questions and the technical requirements to answer them are considerations that have been spinning round the gray matter for some time, especially when thinking about our contemporary addition to that list."

"Naysayers will point out Zenyatta’s perfect 19-for-19 record, but without disparaging what she has accomplished, it must be pointed out that Zenyatta has been dodging top-quality competition for most of her career. Had she been challenging and beating the best of the breed the way Goldikova has done since the middle of her 3-year-old campaign, Zenyatta backers might have an argument. But her stay-at-home Southern California campaigns at the ages of 4, 5, and 6 against a modest bunch of fillies and mares paints her as a provincial champion with only a single world-class performance to her credit, that when beating one of the weaker Breeders’ Cup Classic fields last year in her backyard at Santa Anita."

"There have been questions about her somewhat abrupt retirement Tuesday after Rachel Alexandra had been put through two swift workouts following her second-place finish in the Personal Ensign Stakes on Aug. 29 at Saratoga. But Blasi (trainer Steve Asmussen could not be reached for comment) insists nothing went amiss during the Monday workout. 'She worked beautiful,' Blasi said. 'She went off in 24 and 4, galloped out in 1:01.' Blasi said there had been talk of retirement before the Tuesday decision. 'We had discussed it, Mr. Jackson and Steve and me.' Jackson and Asmussen could not be reached for direct comment on the retirement but issued a statement Tuesday acknowledging what had been clear for months."

"A few days after he bought a modestly bred horse from a friend named Don Hunt, Tim Snyder took a moment to reflect. He had no money, no horse trailer to get his new acquisition to where he needed to go and a filly that had been rejected by nearly everyone else who had come in contact with her. The horse had a clubfoot, a bad shoulder, a reputation for being slow and was blind in one eye, reason enough for Snyder to second-guess what he had just done."

"Patterns in the great ones are apparent, but the answers never seem to satisfy."

"By winning the one-mile Acorn, the 1 1/8-mile Mother Goose and now the grueling 1 1/2-mile Oaks on her father's speedy filly. Mom's Command, [Abigail Fuller] had become the first female jockey to sweep the New York triple Crown for 3-year-old fillies. And Mom's Command became only the sixth filly to accomplish the feat, joining Dark Mirage, Shuvee, Chris Evert, Ruffian and Davona Dale."

"Studies of running, rowing, speed skating, and swimming races have shown that human males are on average 11 percent faster than women. The gap between colts and fillies -- male and female horses younger than 4 years old -- is around 1 percent."

No. 1: Regret, a truly sensational horse, winner of the Kentucky Derby in her first start as a 3YO.

"As the world turns on every verbal barb between the connections of Big Brown and Curlin, almost invisibly out west there's a filly barnstorming her way toward the game's highest honor rolls."