Snowfall looks to continue dominance in Yorkshire Oaks
As amazing as Love looked as a 3-year-old filly of 2020 for trainer Aidan O’Brien and Coolmore, Snowfall, the 2021 model, might have been better.
Love, defeated in her second start this season at age 4, her first loss since 2019, tries to make amends Wednesday at York in the Juddmonte International. She had not been scheduled to start in that race until St Mark’s Basilica, O’Brien and Coolmore’s standout 3-year-old colt, suffered an unspecified setback that precluded an international start.
Thursday, it’s Snowfall’s turn, the Japan-bred Deep Impact filly is set to line up in the Group 1 Yorkshire Oaks, a 1 1/2-mile contest for older fillies and mares around York’s relatively level, left-handed course. The roster of recent Yorkshire Oaks winners gleams bright – the great Enable, who won it twice; Sea of Class, who nearly beat Enable in the mare’s second Arc win; and The Fugue, Midday, and Dar Re Mi. In 2020, Love won this race in a canter, making her favorite for the Arc before a sodden autumn derailed whatever might have remained of her campaign.
Snowfall comes from Ireland, favored as of Tuesday at roughly 2-5, after winning all three of her starts this season. Winning the Group 3 Musidora first time out this year was auspicious, but there was no way of imagining Snowfall would go on to win the Oaks at Epsom by 16 lengths (read that again) and the Irish Oaks by 8 1/2 lengths. At 2, Snowfall, out of the Galileo mare, Best in the World, was decent but won just once in seven starts. Did the horse mature at 3? By lengths and lengths. Snowfall gets nine pounds from the older horses in the race and will have Ryan Moore astride her when the gates spring at 10:35 a.m. Eastern on Thursday.
Eshaada and Loving Dream are highest-rated among the other 3-year-old fillies, and Snowfall’s main competition could come from 4-year-old Wonderful Tonight. Wonderful Tonight capped her 2020 campaign with a pair of Group 1 wins and has landed two more stakes from two starts this year, beating males in the Hardwicke at Royal Ascot and fillies last out in the Lillie Langtry, run over 1 3/4 miles. Wonderful Tonight needs 1 1/2 miles at minimum for her best, and she might not be quite good enough, especially giving weight, to avoid being snowed under Thursday.