Last filly to win Preakness has secure place in history

In the 85 years since Nellie Morse's victory in the Preakness, 10 fillies have been given a shot at the Triple Crown's middle jewel.

Rachel Alexandra is expected to be the 11th Saturday. Even if she succeeds, her immediate predecessor will not be entirely displaced, for Nellie Morse has a secure place in the lore and the annals of the sport.

The late John "Trader" Clark referred to Nellie Morse as a "hothouse filly."

While most of her contemporaries in the foal crop of 1921 were spending the first months of their lives stretching legs and frolicking in the bluegrass fields of central Kentucky, one mare and her suckling filly were stall-bound in a barn.

Noted breeder Jack Keene, on whose land Keeneland Race Course now sits, had concluded that his mare, La Venganza ("the vengeance"), had been given enough chances. It was culling time. So she was donated to a Woodford County, Ky., tobacco farmer whose name has been lost.

However, there was a condition. The foal that the 18-year-old mare was carrying -- by 1914 Belmont Stakes winner Luke McLuke -- would be the property of Keene.

Shortly after La Venganza's filly was safely on the ground, Keene paid a visit and, according to Clark as set out in his memoir, Trader Clark , discovered a most attractive filly. Keene's practiced eye also noticed, "a farm (that) was the most unsafe I'd ever seen for raising a young foal-- barbed-wire fencing, parts of cutting harrows and other farm machinery all over the place."

Keene left with explicit instructions to keep dam and foal in a tobacco barn and, believing that no filly raised in such a manner could become a race horse, catalogued her for sale the following year at Saratoga.

The hammer dropped at $2,000, the buyer being H. C. "Bud" Fisher. In honor of his mother, Fisher named his new acquisition Nellie Morse.

For a filly raised under such unusual conditions, Nellie Morse proved surprisingly adept on the race track. She made 22 starts at 2, won the Fashion Stakes at Belmont Park, and placed in four other stakes, including the Spinaway at Saratoga.

As a 3-year-old, Nellie Morse finished second in the Kentucky Oaks, was shipped to Pimlico, and won three races in nine days. The first was an allowance event and the second was the Pimlico Oaks -- now raced as the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes. The third was the Preakness.

The racing strip turned up sloppy for the 1924 Preakness, and Nellie Morse relished it, tracking the pace-setting Sun Flag for the first half mile, disposing of him when ready, and winning by a length-and-a-half without being seriously threatened. The fourth -- and last, to this date -- filly to win the Preakness, Nellie Morse rewarded her backers handsomely, paying 12 to 1.

Apparently Fisher's filly left it all on the track in the Preakness, as she never won another race. In 1931, Nellie Morse was placed in a Lexington, Ky., sale which providentially coincided with Warren Wright inheriting Calumet Farm. The Preakness winner, in foal to Man o' War's son, American Flag, topped the sale at $6,100.00 and Wright was the buyer.

The American Flag filly foaled by Nellie Morse was named, without any considerable degree of imagination, Nellie Flag. As a race horse, Nellie Flag was champion 2-year-old of 1933 and started as the favorite in the next year's Kentucky Derby, finishing a respectable fourth.

As a broodmare, Nellie Flag started one of Calumet's foundation lines, the family of Nellie Morse through Nellie Flag producing over 175 stakes winners, including, three time Horse of the Year, Forego.