Quote:
Originally Posted by parsixfarms
I get the argument about relative merits, but if you compare the depth of the Prioress to races like the Test or the La Brea (the other grade I sprints for 3YO fillies), the Prioress annually seems to come up short of those two. Perhaps this is unfair, but the Prioress is more often like a prep for the Test than an "end" in itself, and I'm dubious of preps being Grade Is (i.e., when they made the Fountain of Youth a Grade I for a short period of time a few years ago even though it's a prep for the Florida Derby). Not that this year is the best example, but the other thing that has hurt the Prioress in many years is its close proximity to the Azalea at Calder. Both races feed the Test nicely, but they also dilute each other.
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I wouldn't agree that the Prioress is merely a "prep" for the Test. I don't think, generally speaking, horses, particularly sprinters, are really prepping from one race to the next in midseason. In the realm of strictly 3yo filly sprinters (which is by no means some mother lode of great racing talent) it lays a decent enough claim to its Grade 1 ranking. The last 4 runnings of the Prioress have produced at least one subsequent Grade 1 winner each. In several of the last few runnings, there has been at least one previous Grade 1 winner entered in the race. That's no mean feat when you mention that there are only a couple of Grade 1 races for the 3yo sprint division to begin with.
If the Test and the La Brea are drawing better fields a big part of it is the 7f distance each race is carded at. That will draw in several route types on top of the sprint population. The La Brea also has calendar position over the Prioress, being late in the year so that it draws in a lot of well meant comebackers, a few late bloomers, and also has the benefit of an extra 5 months whereby some horses that weren't accomplished around the time of the Prioress, suddenly are major stakes winners.