My colleague at America’s Best Racing, Mike Curry, has long regarded 2-year-old filly races as some of the most difficult to handicap, even after these youngsters get a race or two under their belts. His reasoning is sound – more so than colts at this stage, freshman fillies seem to take unpredictable leaps in maturity from start to start, and it’s often difficult to pinpoint which ones will flip the switch when faced with trying something new such as racing around two turns for the first time.

When Cody Dorman was diagnosed with Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that limited his development and left him unable to walk or talk, his parents worried about the quality of life he would lead.