Fine fillies: Battle of the sexes

It is a departure, admittedly, from what might generally be understood by Parisian chic: jostling with a bunch of unruly males, butting and boring your way through, and then bullocking clear. Quite possibly she will also have defecated in the parade ring beforehand. None of this would you do in stilettos. Even so, there is no mistaking the consummate femininity of Zarkava, the French filly whose only coquetry now is with greatness.

She has been the meteor of the European Flat racing season, which reaches its climax on Sunday in the Bois de Boulogne. No filly has won the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe since Urban Sea in 1993; the last to win aged just three, moreover, was Akiyda in 1982. Zarkava has only ever run against her own sex, and will now meet the meanest brutes in the business – among them Duke Of Marmalade, whose own, protracted development into a champion testifies that you cannot simulate the full physical benefit of maturity in a thoroughbred.

Only six fillies have had the temerity to beat the colts in the Derby, and none since Fifinella in 1916. In fairness, just nine have even tried in the meantime, the latest being Cape Verdi, favourite when well beaten in 1998. In the same decade, Salsabil and Balanchine both won the Irish Derby, while Nobiliary had been beaten only by Grundy at Epsom in 1975. But the bottom line is that the breed has yielded a good four dozen colts superior to its paragon filly, Pretty Polly.

Yet Zarkava so smoulders at the heart of this race that she will start an untouchable favourite. She has raced only half a dozen times, and just once away from Longchamp, the home of the Arc. But she has promised to transcend these limitations of time and place, and achieve immortality in the Turf pantheon.

So far, she has answered every question with such élan – over every kind of terrain, every distance – that she might legitimately be described as elegant. Yet no thoroughbred can achieve top-class form without bestial effort. This apparent ease in Zarkava is the veneer to an unusually generous capacity, both physical and mental. And it is only in achieving the right tension between these, the polar sources of her efficacy as a racehorse, that a filly can ever hope to match colts.

In broad terms, the same gender differences divide both equine and human athletes. Typically, a colt will be somewhat bigger, stronger and faster. The disparity becomes more obvious with age. Flat horses often end their careers as mere adolescents, but a stallion in his prime has all the physical virility of a lion, while even a castrated steeplechaser is all brawn and bulk. Fillies tend to be rather finer in build, and as it happens their heads are often prettier, too.

Physiologically, however, the differences are less overt than in humans. And it has been empirically established that a modest weight concession – on a sliding scale, according to maturity – levels off the playing field. On Sunday, Zarkava's saddle will be 3lb lighter than those carried by her male rivals. In theory, this adulterates the Arc's championship quality. No matter. If fillies can never achieve strict equality, then at least this one can show that some are a good deal more equal than others.

So how does it happen? How do fillies come to leave the meek herd, and challenge the pack leaders? As ever, in the battle of the sexes, there are no straightforward answers.

Hormonal cycles, for instance, sometimes – but not always – affect athletic performance. Occasionally, after a filly has run poorly, it is found that she had been "in season". Mares in the early stages of pregnancy, while still able to race, can improve dramatically. And there are also cases of sudden improvement in the autumn, filling a biological vacuum between the breeding and foaling seasons.

Beyond these arbitrary elements, however, the equation is fairly simple. For almost all the best ones share the same two traits: the body of a colt, and the mind of a filly.

And hence the challenge to the horseman who strives to fulfil their potential. Alain de Royer-Dupré, who trains Zarkava for the Aga Khan, must strike a balance between her physical and mental development.

Different trainers seem to achieve a different emphasis. Jim Bolger, who reiterated his overall mastery by winning the Derby this year with New Approach, has produced an uncanny succession of extremely tough, masculine fillies. The mot juste is "butch". They develop into big, powerful marauders, and also seem to acquire corresponding mental rigour.

At the other extreme is Henry Cecil, whose extraordinary record as a trainer of fillies makes him the Professor Emeritus of the art. Of his 24 British Classic successes, 15 are down to fillies. And Cecil treats them like Wedgwood.

"You just have to go with them, feel your way," he explains. "It's the same as with humans. With a man, you can be a bit more severe. You just have to let fillies enjoy themselves. They need treats, pampering. You have to fit round them more. You have to know what you can get away with. They're just different. The main thing is to treat them with respect."

Cecil's most accomplished fillies have also tended to be feisty ones. In his very first year, he remembers training one "impossible old mule" who ultimately became the game winner of several races.

"If they have that bit of character, you don't take it away," he cautioned. "A lot of the very good ones have a bit of temperament. If they want to have a buck and a kick, or whip round, you let them. You accept all that, you don't try and correct it. If you get rid of it, you end up with a non-entity."

Indian Skimmer, one of his very best fillies, was so insistent on her rights that Cecil ended up having to lead her down to the starting stalls on foot. "And Diminuendo, she took ages to break as a yearling, she took months and months," Cecil remembered. "And when I got her going on the Heath, she took to planting herself, wouldn't do a thing you wanted. We had to take her down [to the gallops] in the horsebox. But in the end she became as genuine a filly as I've had."

And this motif recurs throughout Turf history. Fifinella herself was as sulky and capricious as she was brilliant. Sun Chariot, who won three Classics for the King in 1942, was also wilful and unpredictable. She won the Oaks despite dropping herself out twice in the same race. Godiva, another wartime eccentric, was so mulish that she required the promotion of her groom, Doug Marks, as her regular jockey. Tailed off in the Oaks, she cruised past the whole field, enabling Marks to turn round and shout at the senior riders: "Come on!"

Petite Etoile, the 1959 Oaks winner, was so neurotic that she would relax, going out with the string, only if preceded and followed by other greys. And that is often the way: "character" in a filly is more a matter of sensitivity than malice. A contemporary record described Rockfel, the 1938 Horse of the Year, as intelligent rather than temperamental: "She liked to 'make her own arrangements'... Casually she gives the impression of being bored with life; in reality Rockfel never misses a thing happening round her."

Crucially, then – for those who wonder – Zarkava is a perfect, bespoke fit to join this company. Her physique has the necessary masculinity; and her spirit the necessary independence. When she first emerged, the one reservation was whether her highly-strung nature would lead her astray. As it is, she proved more tractable with each appearance this year – until, that is, her rehearsal in the Prix Vermeille last month.

On that occasion, when the gates opened, Zarkava proved as immovable as a Californian redwood. Christophe Soumillon, her jockey, pushed helplessly as the rest of the field slipped away; only after she had granted them a start of at least six lengths did she consent to leave the stalls. In the event, she was able to coast from last to first in the straight, and Soumillon has still to use the whip except to salute the grandstand.

"She came out very slowly, didn't she?" Cecil mused. "She can't do that in an Arc." But he feels that she will have been easier to bring to a peak, following her midsummer break, than a big colt. Being lighter, he reasons, fillies find conditioning work easier than colts.

It is when they start galloping in anger, of course, that they are at a disadvantage. But a phenomenon like Zarkava demands admiration on her own terms. As everyone now recognises, Ginger Rogers had to match Fred Astaire step for step, only backwards and in high heels. By taking on the colts, Zarkava will not just be measuring herself against Duke Of Marmalade, but against the great fillies of the past. As they say in Paris: vive la difference.

Five greatest fillies of all time

Pretty Polly (foaled 1901)

Still the paragon, still the benchmark, Pretty Polly started off by thrashing John O'Gaunt by 10 lengths at Sandown. John O'Gaunt went on to finish runner-up in two Classics and the die was cast. Champion of both genders in three consecutive years, Pretty Polly had excuses for her only two defeats in 24 starts. She could run over any distance and, it seemed, beat any rival.

Sun Chariot (1939)

Served the King with two wartime championships in royal colours. She was a brilliant winner of the 1,000 Guineas, Oaks and St Leger of 1942. In lifting the final leg of the fillies' triple crown, she beat the Derby victor by three lengths, but there was always that edge of danger, her sole defeat palpably attributable to a sulking fit.

Sceptre (1899)

The only horse to win four Classics outright, she was exploited unsparingly by her owner-trainer, Bob Sievier. One of the great characters in racing's pageant, a gambler and serial bankrupt, Sievier conscripted Sceptre to his financial wars of attrition. None can know what she might have achieved in less desperate hands.

Pebbles (1981)

Blossomed only as a four-year-old, but then became the most accomplished filly of the modern era. The first to win the Eclipse Stakes, she then dashed clear of the Derby winner, Slip Anchor, in the Champion Stakes, before putting the icing on the cake with a pioneering success in the Breeders' Cup Turf.

Noblesse (1960)

Burned briefly but brightly, a champion juvenile and one of the easiest Classic winners of all time in the 1963 Oaks. At Epsom, the Irish filly coasted home 10 lengths clear of the rest, betrayed by not a single drop of sweat in the summer heat. Sadly, she finished lame in her only subsequent start.

Allez France is Arc role model

There was a time, and not so long ago, when finding the winner of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe meant simply finding the best filly in the race. For five successive years from 1979, the fillies Three Troikas, Detroit, Gold River, Akiyda and All Along left the best colts in Europe trailing in their wake. They were following in illustrious hoofprints, too, as Allez France, a filly perfectly named to get the crowd chanting, had captured the race with Parisian style in 1974, avenging her defeat by the perfidious raiders from Albion, Rheingold and Lester Piggott, the previous year. But then it all went wrong for the girls and only Urban Sea in 1993, who went on to foal the Derby winner Galileo, has added to the tally.

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