Only the 'Best' for Breeders' Cup Distaff Winner Blue Prize (ARG)
Blue Prize (ARG), Breeders' Cup Distaff Champion in 2019, sold for $5,000,000 at The November Sale. The six-year-old chestnut mare was purchased by Larry Best's OXO Equine LLC from the consignment Bluegrass Thoroughbred Services, Inc., agent for Merriebelle Stable LLC. She was offered as Hip 98.
In her most recent start, Blue Prize captured the Breeders' Cup Distaff (G1), dispatching even-money favorite and likely Eclipse Champion Older Female Midnight Bisou, as well nine other talented fillies and mares, seven of those already Grade or Group 1 winners.
Blue Prize started her career in her native Argentine, where she won first time out at two. She was a Group 1 winner there at three before shipping to the United States, where she won the Falls City H. (G2) and was twice graded stakes placed – including a third in the Spinster S. (G1), a race would which later put her in the record books.
At five, Blue Prize captured her first Spinster S. (G1), as well as the Fleur de Lis H. (G2), Locust Grove S. (G3), and Top Flight Invitational S. After a fourth place in last year's Breeders' Cup Distaff (G1), Blue Prize returned to form at six, winning the Summer Colony S. at Saratoga before capturing her second edition of the Spinster S. (G1), this time over talented distaffer Elate. That win put her in elite company as only one of four fillies and mares to win back-to-back editions of the Spinster, including Take Charge Lady, Bayakoa (ARG), and Bornastar. Blue Prize followed that historic win with another in the Breeders' Cup Distaff (G1), becoming only the third Argentine-bred to capture the Distaff, and the first since Paseana (ARG) in 1992.
Blue Prize has started 23 times in her career, with 10 wins, eight seconds, and three thirds, and earned $2,692,253. Bred in Argentina by Bioart S.A., Blue Prize raced in North America for Merriebelle Stable LLC and trainer Ignacio Correas IV.
Blue Prize is out of the Group 2 winning Not for Sale mare Blues for Sale (ARG), dam of six winners from as many to race and a full sister to Cure for Sale, a stakes winner in Argentine who was twice graded stakes placed in the United States. She is from the immediate family of graded stakes winners Key to the Saga and Northern Sea.
