Ouija Board - Oaks winner, globetrotter, dam of a Derby winner

‘In terms of merit, there have been better middle-distance fillies and mares than Ouija Board trained in Britain, even in relatively recent times, but the sterling exploits of this experienced international performer, particularly in the latest season, contributed greatly to the contemporary racing scene.’

Fine racemare contributed so much

So began Ouija Board’s essay in Racehorses of 2006 written at the end of a racing career for Ed Dunlop which brought her seven Group/Grade 1 wins in four different countries and on three different continents in the historic black silks with the white cap of her owner Lord Derby, helping her to earnings of more than £3.5m, at the time easily a record for a filly or mare trained in Britain.

Kept in training until she was five, Ouija Board raced 22 times in all, with half of those runs being overseas, but the springboard to her international career was her victory in the 2004 Oaks. Ouija Board had shown promise in three starts late on as a two-year-old, getting off the mark at Yarmouth on her second outing before finishing third in a listed race at Newmarket, but it was a seven-length victory in the Pretty Polly Stakes back at Newmarket on her return at three which put her firmly on course for Epsom.

With just seven runners, there hadn’t been a smaller field for the Oaks for exactly a hundred years but Ouija Board proved a breathtaking winner, settling the issue in a matter of strides once sent into the lead two furlongs out with her rivals strung out behind. Her seven-length beating of the favourite, Galileo’s sister All Too Beautiful, with the Musidora winner Punctilious beaten more than ten lengths into third, was the best performance in the race since User Friendly twelve years earlier. The first three met again at the Curragh where, after being supplemented, Ouija Board became the tenth filly to complete the Oaks/Irish Oaks double, comfortably landing the odds and this time chased home by Punctilious.

Having been a late withdrawal from the Yorkshire Oaks because of soft going, Ouija Board’s two remaining outings at three took place overseas, starting with the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. After becoming involved in some scrimmaging rounding the home turn and having to be switched wide to make her challenge in the straight, she finished strongly to take third behind the French-trained three-year-old colt Bago who enjoyed an uninterrupted run. Supplemented again, Ouija Board ended her year with a first victory in the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf on the only occasion Lone Star Park in Texas has hosted the event.

The only three-year-old in the field, Ouija Board was the pick on form and coped with the sharp track and her first experience of ground softer than good, coming home a length and a half clear of the American filly Film Maker at the end of a steadily-run race.

Ouija Board ended the season with a rating of 125, making her the joint-best three-year-old filly alongside 1000 Guineas winner Attraction. Recent Oaks winners who had been kept in training at four had a mixed record and Ouija Board’s own four-year-old campaign began inauspiciously when she trailed home last in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes (the year Royal Ascot was held at York) after some setbacks in the spring.

Further problems over the summer, including a small stress fracture, meant that her season didn’t get under way in earnest until late September when she showed all her old zest to win the Group 3 Princess Royal Stakes at Newmarket.

There were still plenty of bigger options worldwide for Ouija Board in the remainder of the year, however, and after staying on for second at Belmont behind the enterprisingly-ridden Intercontinental when bidding to retain her Breeders’ Cup title, she ended the year in the Far East, contesting the Japan Cup and Hong Kong Vase. She was only beaten around two lengths behind Alkaased at Tokyo (her fifth place, incidentally, was the only time in her eleven starts abroad at the top level that she didn’t make the frame) but Ouija Board again ended her year on a high, showing a good turn of foot in the short Sha Tin straight to beat the Japanese three-year-old colt Six Sense by two and three quarter lengths with the favourite, Arc runner-up Westerner, only fifth.

Retirement on hold

Ouija Board’s annual rating in 2005 slipped to 121 but her lucrative win in Hong Kong prompted connections to delay her retirement to the paddocks for another year. As it turned out, her final season of racing, which involved more globe-trotting in a busy nine-race campaign stretching from March to November, saw Ouija Board back to her high-class best. It took her a few starts to hit top form, though, with her first win of the year coming at Royal Ascot. Prior to that, she’d been fourth in the Dubai Sheema Classic, third in the Queen Elizabeth II Cup back in Hong Kong (left with plenty to do in both races) and then second to the high-class French horse Shirocco in the Coronation Cup.

Hitherto, all of Ouija Board’s biggest wins had come at a mile and a half but the Prince of Wales’s Stakes was again her chosen race at the Royal meeting rather than the Hardwicke. Despite the steady pace set by Frankie Dettori on the eventual runner-up Electrocutionist, Ouija Board coped well with the test of speed and came with a sweeping run once switched off the rail to prevail by half a length in a bunched finish.

The Eclipse, for which she was sent off favourite, was next but that proved an anti-climax as Ouija Board was hemmed in for much of the straight and finished only fifth, coming back stiff and with cuts to her legs after getting bumped when trying to get a clear run.

Nassau of the ages

But in what proved to be her final start on home turf, Ouija Board bounced back in her next race, putting up one of her most memorable performances in a thrilling edition of the Nassau Stakes at Goodwood. She and the previous year’s winner, Alexander Goldrun, were locked together for much of the last three furlongs with Ouija Board getting the verdict by a short head. Paraded in front of the stands, Ouija Board was given a tremendous reception before both the first two were given ‘three cheers’ on their return to the winner’s enclosure.

Ouija Board had Alexander Goldrun behind her again next time in the Irish Champion Stakes, running right up to her best again though this time finding the three-year-old Dylan Thomas, winner of the Irish Derby, a neck too good for her. With rain before the Champion Stakes putting paid to plans for one last start in Britain, Ouija Board’s next outing brought her final career victory – number ten – in the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf again. She became only the second horse in Breeders’ Cup history to regain a title at the meeting and was chased home at Churchill Downs, as she had been two years earlier, by Film Maker. As in 2004, Ouija Board’s Breeders’ Cup victory also won her the Eclipse Award for best female turf horse in North America.

Ouija Board was scheduled to end the year again in Tokyo and then Hong Kong, and while the recurrence of an old splint injury ruled her out of the Hong Kong Vase a day before the race, she did get to improve on her previous year’s placing in the Japan Cup. Third place, beaten two and a half lengths, was no disgrace, particularly as that edition of the Japan Cup went to one of its best winners, Deep Impact. Ouija Board’s swansong at Tokyo gains more credit with every year that passes too because no European horse since, of the many that have tried, has ever managed to finish in the first three.

Frankie Dettori rode Ouija Board to her last two wins in the Nassau and at the Breeders’ Cup, and on her final start at Tokyo, but it was Kieren Fallon who partnered her to all four of her successes as a three-year-old and to her Hong Kong Vase win, while Olivier Peslier was in the saddle for her Prince of Wales’s Stakes victory.

Her legacy lives on

Ouija Board’s story doesn’t end with her retirement from racing, though, as she wasn’t one of those top racemares whose broodmare career paled by comparison.

Mated with Galileo, Ouija Board produce an even better horse than she was herself in her top-class (rated 132) son Australia, winner of the Derby, Irish Derby and Juddmonte International. Australia’s own success at stud – with the likes of St Leger winner Galileo Chrome, Breeders’ Cup Mile winner Order of Australia, and this year’s Hardwicke Stakes winner Broome – will ensure Ouija Board’s name lives on in pedigrees for a while yet. Ouija Board’s other winners included the very smart Dubawi colt Frontiersman, a four-time winner for Godolphin, who also emulated his dam by finishing runner-up in the Coronation Cup.

The essay on Ouija Board quoted above concluded with this eulogy:

‘She was a credit to her sporting connections, whose decision to keep her in training for two further seasons beyond her classic year provided the racing public with so much pleasure. The phrase ‘we won’t see the like again’ is overused but it seems apt for Ouija Board whose global achievements, coupled with resilience and consistency over three seasons, will take some matching by future generations of British fillies and racemares.’

The fact that an even better mare did come along just over a decade later, she too an Oaks winner who went on to success at the Breeders’ Cup and who succeeded where Ouija Board failed by winning the Arc – twice – takes nothing away from Ouija Board’s own exploits. Arguably, Ouija Board provided the blueprint for Enable’s own extended racing career – the latter just needs to come up with a Derby winner of her own now!

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