By JIM LITKE
AP Sports Columnist

Published: Monday, May 11, 2009
Updated: Monday, May 11, 2009 10:08 AM CDT

Everybody has an opinion on whether a filly should run against the boys.

The one that mattered most was voiced Sunday by the man heading up a group that last week paid between $3-4 million for Kentucky Oaks winner Rachel Alexandra.

After watching the filly work out over the same Churchill Downs track where she devastated the top 3-year-old females the day before the Kentucky Derby, owner Jess Jackson pronounced her ready for the Preakness and the top 3-year-old males. Then he backed up his boast by offering to pony up another $100,000 in supplemental fees to buy Rachel Alexandra a spot in the field for the second jewel of the Triple Crown.

For a sport that craves attention the way its stars crave sweets, the chance to hype this latest battle of the sexes should have been a no-brainer. While Jackson didn’t have to wait long for his peers to agree, confirmation sure came in a roundabout fashion.

A few hours later, the owners of Rachel Alexandra’s two biggest rivals — Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird and runner-up Pioneerof the Nile — reluctantly announced they’d abandoned a scheme designed to keep the filly out of the race.

“He’s rethought it,” Bennie Woolley Jr., who trains Mine That Bird, said about co-owner Mark Allen, “and ... he feels like it would be unfair to do that and she’s going to run.”

Allen and coconspirator Ahmed Zayat, who owns Pioneerof the Nile, weren’t quite so hung up on principle earlier in the week. Both had their reason for wanting to keep Rachel Alexandra out of the Preakness next Saturday at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore: Allen because he didn’t want to lose jockey Calvin Borel, who rode the filly in the Oaks and Mine That Bird in the Derby and left no doubt which saddle he’d choose if they wound up in the same race; Zayat because he wants to avenge his colt’s loss to Mine That Bird and believed the filly would only get in the way.

Both explanations were fine — if the owners had only stopped there. Horsemen, after all, will do almost anything for a competitive edge, and always have.

But both men said another reason they planned to enter additional horses in the Preakness, and urge other owners to consider doing the same, was to fill up the 14-horse field without Rachel Alexandra, and thus protect the filly from herself. Few people needed reminding of the tragic death of the filly Eight Belles in the 2008 Derby, and the debate it occasioned, but both Allen and Zayat went there, anyway.

“People are concerned that it would not be for the good of the sport. Nobody,” Zayat said, “wants a situation like we had last year with Eight Belles.”

As we said at the top, everybody has an opinion on the safety of a filly running against boys and you can count on the animal rights advocates making theirs known right up until post-time. Battles between the sexes have been taking place since people began racing horses for money with mixed results. What no one debates is that lately it’s taken its toll on the fillies.

While Rags to Riches became the first filly since 1905 to win the Belmont two years ago, it took her nearly three months to recover from that successful stretch duel against Curlin on the punishing New York oval. She was out for three months, then injured in her first race back and retired not long after.

The last two fillies to run the Derby before Eight Belles didn’t fare even that well. After the 1999 Derby, Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert ran Excellent Meeting back in the Preakness and she was so gassed that jockey Kent Desormeaux pulled her up with almost half the race left. The other filly in that 1999 race, Three Ring, reared up in the paddock just before her next race, fractured her skull and had to be euthanized on the spot.

Long-term prospects, even for fillies who beat the boys in the Derby, haven’t been much better. Neither 1980 winner Genuine Risk nor Winning Colors, the last female winner in 1988, has managed to produce a single stakes winner.

Jackson is sure to come under criticism, not just for running Rachel Alexandra against the boys, but for doing so just two weeks after she ran in the Oaks. Never mind that her male competitors will be doing the same, or that Jackson is among the more enlightened owners and a leader in the movement to reform thoroughbred racing.

Back in the day, Jackson’s rivals would have relished the buzz that a first-class filly would bring to the field and lined up to detail their plans to beat her. After Willing Colors’ gate-to-wire win in the Derby, old school trainer Woody Stephens went so far as to promise he would use up his exceptional colt, Forty Niner, to make sure the filly wouldn’t have the same easy trip in the Preakness.

“I might finish last,” Stephens said, “but she’ll be next-to-last.”

True to his word, Stephens burned up Forty Niner in a desperate gambit to send Winning Colors’ Triple Crown hopes up in flames. It reignited one of the more heated controversies in racing, but in truth, it only made public a win-at-all costs code that horsemen have honored for as long as thoroughbreds have gone to the post.

Bet that several of Rachel Alexandra’s rivals are prepared to do the same, even if they don’t dare say so.

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org