Brendan Walsh knows what a Kentucky Oaks winner looks like. For three seasons he had champion Pretty Mischievous, winner of the 2023 filly classic, in his barn, and knew her every detail. He likes what he’s seen from Bella Ballerina as she prepares for the 2026 Oaks.
“It’s amazing, the similarity now,” said Walsh, who will saddle Bella Ballerina, a half-sister to Pretty Mischievous. “She gets more and more like her sister all the time, you know, because she was a little tricky last year. She wasn’t as straightforward as Pretty was. But I think she’s finally starting to get more straightforward. She’s obviously got as much talent as Pretty had.”
Like Pretty Mischievous, Bella Ballerina is a Godolphin homebred, and her regular rider is Tyler Gaffalione. Both are out of Pretty City Dancer, who is trying to become just the fourth mare in 152 runnings of the Oaks to produce multiple winners, and the first to do so in more than half a century.
Blue Delight is the queen of such mares, having produced three winners in Real Delight (1952), Bubbley (1953), and Princess Turia (1956). Queenlike produced winners King’s Daughter (1906) and Ellen-a-Dale (1908), and most recently, Quaze produced Susan’s Girl (1972) and Quaze Quilt (1974).
Pretty City Dancer won three of 11 starts, including the Debutante Stakes at Churchill Downs and a dead-heat score in the Grade 1 Spinaway Stakes at Saratoga. Now 12, the Tapit mare was a $3.5 million purchase for Godolphin out of the 2018 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky fall selected mixed sale.
“She’s turned out to be a great purchase, a lucky purchase for us,” said Michael Banahan, director of bloodstock for Godolphin. “She’s had four runners and four winners, and one was a champion, and her sister is trying to follow in her footsteps. So it’s absolutely very exciting. We couldn’t be happier with her.”
Pretty Mischievous, by Into Mischief, was Pretty City Dancer’s second foal. She won four stakes in 2023 to secure the Eclipse Award as outstanding 3-year-old filly, with her three Grade 1 victories highlighted by the Kentucky Oaks.
Bella Ballerina, a daughter of the farm’s in-house stallion Street Sense, was foaled on March 28, 2023. Three days prior, Pretty Mischievous had finished second when caught late in the Grade 2 Fair Grounds Oaks. That effort prompted Walsh to put blinkers on the filly for the first time in the Kentucky Oaks, a move that proved successful.
Now, three years later, Walsh will take blinkers off Bella Ballerina for the first time in the Oaks, after she also was second in the Fair Grounds Oaks last time out. Bella Ballerina won her first three starts, including a pair of Grade 2 stakes, but in the Fair Grounds Oaks she pulled hard and was overhauled late by the talented Life of Joy.
“It’s funny that I put them on her sister,” Walsh said on entry day for the Oaks.
Gaffalione rode Pretty Mischievous in the majority of her races, and used the same word as Walsh, “straightforward,” to describe the champion. He has been aboard Bella Ballerina in all four of her starts, and has also ridden her in her breezes leading in to the Oaks, as Walsh has worked her behind horses to teach her tractability. While Gaffalione says Bella Ballerina has matured, he sees differences between her and Pretty Mischievous.
“As far as talent-wise, both tremendously talented, very classy fillies, but very different in their demeanor,” Gaffalione said. “Pretty, she was very straightforward, just a racehorse, just came in, did her job. [Bella Ballerina is] a little more quirky. She thinks a little bit more, I would say. Honestly, I just think she’s really intelligent, almost too intelligent, but tremendously talented.”
Walsh is the one who has to manage that intelligence.
“It’s always good if they’re smart, and the good ones generally are,” the trainer said. “Pretty was very, very intelligent, super intelligent.”
The difference in the fillies, particularly physically, can be attributed to being by different stallions.
“Individually, Pretty Mischievous was a big, strong filly, a lot of power, great, big depth of gift on her, nice, big shoulder,” Banahan said. “Ballerina is developing into that type of filly as well – maybe not quite the depth of Pretty Mischievous, but she’s a pretty good size. Probably the stallions had as much influence as anything.
“We’re big fans of Street Sense, obviously a great stallion for us,” Banahan added of the 2007 Kentucky Derby winner. “He’s a very straightforward horse. He’s big, but he’s correct. . . . Obviously, he imparts an awful lot of quality, as well. He’s on the back end, maybe, of his stallion career now, but he’s still producing good ones. So some nice ones in the pipeline still by him, as well.”
The pipeline continues for this family. Pretty City Dancer has a 2-year-old full brother to Pretty Mischievous named Talleyrand. Pretty City Dancer delivered a Gun Runner colt in February.
Meanwhile, Pretty Mischievous had her first foal in March – a colt by Street Sense.
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