The 4-year-old filly Alpine Princess is a multiple stakes winner with earnings of more than $700,000, a successful career by any measure – except one.
Alpine Princess has yet to win a graded stakes race, a hole in her résumé connections hope to fill Thursday at Churchill Downs in the Grade 3, $400,000 Falls City.
The Falls City, for fillies and mares over 1 1/8 miles on dirt, drew 10 entrants and came up strong for the class level.
“It’s a good group of fillies and mares,” said Brad Cox, who trains Alpine Princess for Full of Run Racing and Madaket Stables. “There have been times this filly has looked like a very good horse.”
Alpine Princess, 4-1 on the track’s morning line, with Irad Ortiz Jr. named to ride, missed by a head about a year ago as the odds-on favorite in the Grade 3 Comely at Aqueduct. Next out, she was second by a neck as the odds-on favorite in the Grade 3 Houston Ladies Classic. Cox felt the same as the betting public, that Alpine Princess laid over those fields.
Most recently, in the Grade 2 Locust Grove about 10 weeks ago at Churchill, Alpine Princess finished well closing into a slow pace set by victorious Royal Spa and was second-best again. The break into this start came by design. Cox first freshened up his horse, then bore down on her, trying to bring Alpine Princess into Thursday’s contest fresh and at the top of her game.
“That’s what we were hoping. That was our plan. She is training well for this, and I’m hoping she can move forward off that last run,” Cox said.
Royal Spa returns in the Falls City also unraced since the Locust Grove. At the start of her 2025 campaign, Royal Spa looked like a filly who topped out distance-wise at a one-turn mile. But trainer Rodolphe Brisset felt through the winter and into the spring that Royal Spa had learned to relax and ration her pace, and the horse validated her trainer’s confidence winning her two-turn debut in the Shawnee Stakes on May 31.
Her Locust Grove came after Royal Spa failed to show her best seeking Grade 1 glory in the Clement Hirsch at Del Mar, but the race most pertinent to Thursday’s might prove to be the Fleur de Lis on June 28. There, Royal Spa ran to her peak form but in her lone try over 1 1/8 miles finished a fading second. The 91 Beyer Speed Figure the race produced fell short of her 1 1/16-mile figures, and Royal Spa might hit a wall going any farther than that trip.
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Locust Grove third-place finisher Regaled did not remain idle following that start. On the contrary, she went to Del Mar for the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, not only finishing third of 12, but doing so under adverse conditions. Regaled broke from post 12, a tough draw in the 1 1/8-mile Distaff, and as a one-run closer came from 11th over a racing surface favoring front-runners. Regaled went off at just less than 7-1 in the Locust Grove and at 30-1 in the Distaff, but on Friday is listed as the 5-2 morning-line favorite, a low price to accept on a pace-dependent horse who just shipped to California and back while running a career best.
While some figured that the 4-year-old filly Raging Sea was headed to life as a broodmare following her distant fourth-place finish Aug. 23 in the Grade 1 Personal Ensign, she shows up in the Falls City with one last chance to get back to the form that earned her a second-place BC Distaff finish in 2024. That seems unlikely, as does a win from any of the other six in the Falls City, where Alpine Princess just might bag that elusive graded stakes score.
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