Alpinista tries to continue Group 1-winning ways in Yorkshire Oaks

After three Group 1 wins in Germany last year and another starting her 2022 campaign in France, Alpinista will try to win her first Group 1 in England when she starts Thursday in the Yorkshire Oaks at York Racecourse.

Five-year-old Alpinista could face the winners of this year’s Oaks at Epsom and the Irish Oaks. Final entries for the 1 1/2-mile Yorkshire Oaks are to be taken Tuesday.

Despite being restricted to fillies and mares, the Yorkshire Oaks has proven an important stepping-stone to the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in October at Longchamp. Enable won the Yorkshire Oaks on the way to her first Arc win 2017, and won it again in 2019 before finishing second to Waldgeist while bidding for her third Arc. Sea of Class won the 2018 Yorkshire Oaks before just failing to run down Enable in the Arc that year.

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Alpinista’s connections, owner-breeder Kirsten Rausing and trainer Mark Johnston, definitely have the Arc in their plans for Alpinista, who only emerged as a top-class filly the second half of her 4-year-old campaign in 2021. Alpinista beat subsequent Arc winner Torquator Tasso in the Grosser Preis von Berlin in August and went from England to Germany for two more Group 1 wins last fall. Slow to come around this spring, Alpinista, a daughter of Frankel, only made her 2022 debut July 3, when she won the Group 1 Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud by 1 1/4 lengths.

Dismissed at odds of 7-1, Alpinista and regular rider Luke Morris had to make their own room in the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud, but Alpinista was game and capable going on to a comfortable win. Her six-race win streak includes several races on good-to-soft going, but her connections believe Alpinista hits her peak on firmer footing and hope thunderstorms in the forecast don’t drop too much rain on the York course.

Three-year-olds get nine pounds from the older fillies and mares in the Yorkshire Oaks, and Magical Lagoon and Tuesday could be very competitive with that sort of weight break. Magical Lagoon comes off the best race of her career, a victory in a somewhat soft renewal of the 1 1/2-mile Irish Oaks. Tuesday, trained by Aidan O’Brien, won the Oaks in early May at Epsom over tough-trip Emily Upjohn, but finished fourth in her only start since, the June 25 Irish Oaks.

The Yorkshire Oaks is part of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Series, offering the winner a fees-paid entry into the BC Filly and Mare Turf at Keeneland and travel expenses to Kentucky this fall.