Traditionally the first Classic of the season, the 2,000 Guineas is run over the Rowley Mile at Newmarket in early May each year. The 2,000 Guineas was inaugurated in 1809 and, although often referred to as the ‘first colts’ Classic’, remains open to three-year-old thoroughbred colts and fillies (who receive a 3lb weight-for-sex allowance from their male counterparts), as it always has been. However, despite advantageous conditions, the 2,000 Guineas is rarely on option for top-class fillies, these days, with modern trainers preferring the 1,000 Guineas; the latter race has co-existed with the 2,000 Guineas since 1815 and, nowadays, offers an identical prize of £500,000.
While conventional wisdom dictates that fillies are more likely to win against their own sex, in the 1,000 Guineas, historically, a total of seven (including the dead-heating Formosa in 1868) have been victorious in the ‘original’ Guineas. That said, the last of them, Garden Path, owned by Lord Derby, saddled by his private trainer Walter Earl and ridden by Harry ‘The Head Waiter’ Wragg, won a wartime renewal run, not on the Rowley Mile, but on the adjacent July Course, at Newmarket, in 1944. She also contested a wartime substitute for the Derby, known as the ‘New Derby Stakes’, also run at Newmarket, but finished unplaced after suffering an injury.
For the first filly ever to win the 2,000 Guineas, we need to leaf back through the history books just over a century, to April 23, 1822, when Pastille, saddled by ‘Emperor of Trainers’ Robert Robertson, justified odds of 4/6 by beating just two male rivals with consummate ease. Next up, in 1840, came Crucifix, trained by John Day Sr., who became one of just four horses, ever, to complete the 1,000 Guineas – 2,000 Guineas double. Indeed, she also had the distinction of being the shortest-priced winner in the history of the 1,000 Guineas, justifying odds of 1/10, before taking the supposed ‘colts’ Classic’ just 48 hours later.
The aforementioned Formosa, trained by Henry Woolcott, had her first ‘moment in the sun’ when dead-heating with Moslem, a colt trained by Alec Taylor Sr., in the 2,000 Guineas in 1868. However, she, too, won the 1,000 Guineas two days later and went on to win the Oaks and the St. Leger, thereby completing both the Fillies’ Triple Crown and the Triple Crown proper. A decade later, in 1878, Pilgrimage, trained by Joe Cannon, was another filly to complete the Guineas double and only beaten in the Oaks, going down by a length. In 1882, Shotover, trained by John Porter had the distinction of beating the colts in both the 2,000 Guineas and the Derby, but was beaten at long odds-on in the 1,000 Guineas and again in the St. Leger. Both those defeats came at the hands of fillies, though, and with the Oaks, obviously going to a filly, all five Classics were won by the ‘fairer sex’ for the one and only time in history.
Probably the most famous filly to win the 2,000 Guineas, though, was Sceptre, who was owned and trained for her three-year-old campaign, in 1902, by Robert ‘Bob’ Siever. Despite being narrowly defeated, under 6st 7lb, in the Lincolnshire Handicap at Lincoln, the daughter of Persimmon went on to contest all five Classics, winning four of them. She followed her victory in the 2,000 Guineas with another in the 1,000 Guineas two days later and, having been beaten in the Derby, won the Oaks two days after that, too. Thereafter, she also won the St. James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot and the Nassau Stakes at Goodwood on the way to another Classic victory in the St. Leger.