Lady's Secret

Lady's Secret was an American Champion Thoroughbred filly race horse.

Sired by the legendary U.S. Triple Crown champion, Secretariat, and from the dam, Great Lady M., the gray filly Lady's Secret was bred by Robert H. Spreen at Lucas Farm in Oklahoma. Spreen sold her for $200,000 to Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Klein (former owner of the San Diego Chargers), and she was prepared for racing by Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas. Lady's Secret, who liked running at the front, won twenty-five of her forty-five races and had nine second-place finishes. The daughter of Secretariat dominated the fillies she raced against, but with age she gained strength enough to become competitive against the males.

After winning the Moccasin Stakes at age two, Lady's Secret won three important races at age three, including two Grade I events, and ran second to stablemate Life's Magic in the 1985 Breeders' Cup Distaff. In 1986, four-year-old Lady's Secret became a dominant force in American thoroughbred racing. She defeated the nation's best male horses four times, winning ten of her fifteen starts that season, all graded stakes races. Eight of these Stakes wins were Grade 1 events. No horse has won this many graded stakes races in one season since races became graded in 1973. Small and grey and dainty, and weighing no more than 900 pounds, she had great speed and true grit. Nicknamed "The Iron Lady," she was the first female to win the Whitney Stakes since Gallorette in 1948. She finished her amazing year by winning the Breeders' Cup Distaff with Pat Day aboard.

Her performance throughout the 1986 racing season earned her the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Older Female Horse plus the most prestigious honor of all, and a rarity for fillies, the Eclipse Award for Horse of the Year for 1986.

Retired at age five, in 1989 Lady's Secret was sold to Fares Farm in Lexington, Kentucky to stand as a broodmare. In 1992, she was inducted in the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. She is ranked at number 76 by Blood-Horse magazine in their list of the top 100 U.S. thoroughbred champions of the 20th Century.

Lady's Secret died suddenly on March 4, 2003 at Valley Creek Farm in Valley Center, California as a result of complications from giving birth. None of her progeny were anything like their mother.

The Lady's Secret Café at Monmouth Park Racetrack in Oceanport, New Jersey is named in her honor. In 1993, a major race at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California was named in her honor, but from 2010 it will be known as the Zenyatta Stakes, after the unbeaten mare who won that race in 2008 and 2009. Lady's Secret Drive in Del Rayo Estates, Rancho Santa Fe, California where her owner lived was also named in her memory.

Her lifetime earnings equaled $3,021,325.