Sea Of Class tries next level

Sea of Class made her fourth start in the Irish Oaks on July 21, and her group stakes debut simultaneously served as her Group 1 stakes debut. The climb from a listed race at Newbury to the top level is supposed to be steep, but Sea Of Class scaled those heights comfortably. She beat Forever Together by a neck to win the Irish Oaks, one of those races where the bare margin of victory understated the performance gap between the two horses. Sea Of Class never came under a serious ride from James Doyle at The Curragh and is set to try to add another Group 1 to her résumé Thursday at York in the Yorkshire Oaks.

Sea Of Class is the solid early favorite in the Yorkshire Oaks, which is contested at a distance just shy of 1 1/2 miles and was captured last year by the phenomenal filly Enable. It’s too early to put Sea Of Class in Enable’s league – but she is not all that far from getting into the conversation.

The Yorkshire Oaks is a Breeders’ Cup Challenge race linked to the BC Filly and Mare Turf, contested over 1 3/8 miles this fall at Churchill Downs. Thursday’s winner gets an automatic berth into the race plus travel expenses. Sea Of Class is BC-nominated and while her trainer, William Haggas, doesn’t have a long history of racing in North America, he did send Call to Mind to capture the Belmont Gold Cup. That said, should Sea Of Class continue progressing, her connections surely would take a long look at the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, a race in which 3-year-old fillies – and their massive weight break – have found great recent success.

First, Thursday’s race, where 3-year-olds like Sea Of Class get nine pounds from the older mares. The going is expected to be good-to-firm, the sort of ground Sea Of Class already has handled, and Forever Together, her victim in the Irish Oaks, is among those expected to take another crack at the Irish Oaks winner.

Forever Together hit her top mark this year winning the Epsom Oaks, though that race was run over soft ground and is the only win among the filly’s six starts. Also in the mix is a prolific winner, Laurens, who has five wins from seven starts including two straight in French Group 1’s, the Prix Saint-Alary followed by the Prix de Diane, or French Oaks. The Yorkshire Oaks (post time 10:35 a.m. Eastern) is a deep race – but probably not too deep for Sea Of Class.