'As God is my judge, she might be better than Secretariat'

Foaled April 17, 1972
Pedigree Reviewer – Shenanigans
Owner-breeder Stuart & Barbara Janney
Trainer Frank Whiteley
Main jockey Jacinto Vasquez
Career record ten wins from 11 runs
Most famous for Renowned as greatest filly in North American history, a female version of Secretariat who won her first ten starts by a cumulative 83 lengths; the only race she lost was the one in which she lost her life in July 1975

OFTEN labelled North America's greatest female racehorse, Ruffian became the folk heroine of US racing in the mid-1970s. After a career brutally cut short after just 14 months, her popular appeal rivalled that of even the legendary Secertariat, to whom she can legitimately be seen as a female equivalent, her lustre undimmed even as her achievements recede down the gunsight of history.

An intimidating jet-black specimen, Ruffian was big, beautiful and boy was she fast. She was never headed at a marker pole in any of her races and her US past-performance charts reading as a series of '1's.