Magical starts campaign in Pretty Polly Stakes

Magical, a $4 million mare, launches her 5-year-old campaign Sunday at The Curragh in the Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes.

With durability to match her elite capability, Magical, an eight-time stakes winner, has made 21 career starts and earned about $4.15 million for her owners – Derrick Smith, Mrs. John Magnier, and Michael Tabor – and trainer Aidan O’Brien. She really came to hand late in her 3-year-old season, winning the British Champion Fillies and Mares on Oct. 20 and coming back two weeks later to give the great Enable all she wanted finishing second in the Breeders’ Cup Turf.

That stout end to her season took nothing out of Magical last year, when she went 9-5-3-0 with victories over males in the Group 1 Tattersalls Gold Cup, the Group 1 Irish Champion, and the Group 1 Champion Stakes at Ascot. Her only losses were a pair of second-place finishes to Enable, another to the top-class Crystal Ocean, and a fifth in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, a 1 1/2-mile race slightly beyond Magical’s best trip.

The 1 1/4-mile Pretty Polly lies right in her sweet spot, and she faces just four rivals, including stablemate Fleeting, the second choice Friday in overseas ante-post wagering. Fleeting, unlike Magical, has gotten in a start this year, but she’s not Magical’s equal in raw ability and probably prefers more distance.

One other entrant, Cayenne Pepper, bears mentioning because she showed talent last year at age 2, ending her season with a fourth in the Group 1 Fillies

Mile, and as a 3-year-old gets a 12-pound weight break from her older female rivals Sunday.

Post time for the Pretty Polly is 11:45 a.m. Eastern.