Sceptre was one of the all-time great fillies and two years after she was foaled there was another, Pretty Polly. At the beginning of the 20th century she won 22 of her 24 races and was second in the other two. In 1903 she won her first start by ten lengths and all of her eight other races as a two-year-old, which included the Cheveley Park and the Middle Park.
Pretty Polly’s unbeaten sequence extended to 15, including the 1,000 Guineas in record time at odds of 1/4 and the Oaks at 8/100, followed by the Coronation and Nassau Stakes, the St Leger (completing the fillies’ Triple Crown) and the Park Hill. A trip to Longchamp proved a step too far, but she won the Free Handicap (qv) run later that autumn at Newmarket.
In a campaign interrupted by injury, at four she won the Coronation Cup in record time and three other races. Aged five she won another Coronation Cup before failing to stay the Ascot Gold Cup distance. Firm ground precluded her from running again and she retired to stud. Her offspring were pretty good but as Roger Longrigg said in The History of Horse Racing (1972) “she is on the bottom line of pedigrees of good horses all over the world.”
The Pretty Polly Stakes began in 1962 and is now an established part of Newmarket’s Guineas meeting, run on the Sunday alongside the fillies’ classic. The Pretty Polly is a Group 3 run over a mile and a quarter and can be a guide to the Oaks.
There is another Pretty Polly Stakes in Ireland, a Group 1 for three-year-olds and older fillies at The Curragh run in late June or early July. Pretty Polly was bred in Ireland. This has been staged since 1947. In 2024 it was won by Bluestocking, who would go on to win the Arc de Triomphe later in the year.
Sources include:
The Heath and the Turf (Richard Onslow) pp201-2
The History of Horse Racing (Roger Longrigg) p276