February 21, 2026 
“To sleep! perchance to dream.”
—Hamlet
In sports, athletes are often so closely connected with their trainer or coach that the one is indistinguishable without the other. Muhammad Ali and Angelo Dundee. Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers. Pat Summitt with the basketball University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers. John Wooden and UCLA basketball, with his NBA Hall of Fame players Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton.
In American racing, there is the incomparable mare, Zenyatta, and her equally identifiable trainer, John Shirreffs.
Tributes and memories have been thoughtfully coming in this week for the architect of the finest career of a female racehorse in North American history. John Shirreffs passed away in his sleep on Feb. 12 at his Arcadia, California home. He was 80.
To the people who came to know him, John Shirreffs was far more than a well-respected trainer; he was a well-respected man. So attached he was to his craft, he reportedly married wife Dottie on Dec. 21, 2003 on the day he won the Hollywood Starlet Stakes (G1) with Hollywood Story at Hollywood Park.
“The industry lost a great man,” mourned Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, who rode both Giacomo and Zenyatta for Shirreffs. “I lost a good friend.”
Said Breeders’ Cup in its statement: “John was widely respected for his integrity, patience, and steadfast commitment to the care and development of his horses. He understood the responsibility that comes with greatness and embraced the opportunity to share it.”
Admired as he was, Shirreffs spent many years successfully working outside the glare of national spotlight, despite winning many graded races. In 2005, he came to prominence as a trainer in stunning fashion, winning the Kentucky Derby (G1) with 50-1 super-longshot Giacomo, his first starter in the Run for the Roses. He most recently conditioned 2025 third-place Kentucky Derby finisher and Pennsylvania Derby (G1) winner, Baeza.e
But between those two formidable horses was the horse with which he is forever connected: The Unicorn—Zenyatta.
The daughter of Godolphin’s 2002 Dubai World Cup (G1) winner, Street Cry (out of Vertigineux by Kris S), Zenyatta was immediately placed under Shirreff’s care at California’s Santa Anita Park by owners Jerry and Ann Moss, who also owned Giacomo. The tall filly won her first race at nearby Hollywood Park, then never looked back.
Never looking back was also indicative of her running style under her regular rider, Mike Smith. Zenyatta was the ultimate closer, often breaking in last place and closing with a flourish to handily win races. As her legend grew, so too did her legion of California fans, particularly tween-age girls at her nearby Hollywood Park races carrying “Girl Power!” posters in Zenyatta’s distinctive sky-blue-and-pink silk colors. Before racing, she would delight fans by actually dancing her way onto the racetrack.
She was unbeatable from 2007, when she won her debut, to 2010. Racing’s most famous horse at the time, Zenyatta won 18 consecutive graded races, 13 of them Grade 1. She holds the North American record for Grade 1 wins by a filly or mare.
In her 2008 campaign alone, she scored seven victories including the Breeders’ Cup Ladies Classic (G1), now renamed the Distaff. Her five-race 2009 campaign culminated in her victory against the boys in that year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1), the only mare to win America’s ultimate racing test.
By 2010, Zenyatta had become famous enough to merit an interview with John Shirreffs about her “eating habits” on CBS’ 60 Minutes, which included an occasional bottle of her favorite beverage—Guinness stout.
Zenyatta would tick off five more consecutive victories in 2010 before entering that year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs, her planned final race before retirement.
Starting under the lights in the Louisville twilight, Zenyatta began far last, her accustomed starting position under jockey Smith. As the field came to the top of the stretch, Smith found an outside lane, Zenyatta went to her usual high gear and began picking off horses. But the surface at Churchill is asphalt-fast and that year’s three-time graded-stakes winner, Claiborne Farm’s Blame, had taken a several-length’s lead over Preakness (G1) winner, Lookin At Lucky.
To this day, fans will watch the replay of that race as Blame and Zenyatta approach the finish line, certain the great mare will win.
Of course, in real life that is not what happened, no matter how many times that tape is rewound to seek a perfect ending to a near-perfect career. The finish of the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Classic is always heartbreakingly identical: the appropriately named Blame would win by a short head, Zenyatta’s only smudge on an otherwise perfect racing career.
Shirreff’s was typically magnanimous in defeat. The day after, he brought out Zenyatta so the large gathering of her public fans could say farewell to their calmly grazing favorite.
In the 16 years since that farewell, so much has changed in racing. Hollywood Park, where Zenyatta scored many of her victories, permanently closed in 2013. The young girls who gathered there to cheer on their heroine are now young women.
Shirreff’s moved his stable to New York’s historic Belmont Park before that closure. But Belmont too has been shuttered for three years while undergoing upgrades the New York Racing Association (NYRA) hopes will bring fans back to Thoroughbred racing, a sport which now has much more of a niche audience, save for events like the Kentucky Derby and Breeders’ Cup.
Zenyatta is still with us, now 22 and pensioned from broodmare duties at Lane’s End Farm in Versailles, Kentucky. Her progeny, however, have been largely unaccomplished as racehorses. But that’s not uncommon. As great as he was as a racehorse and broodmare sire, Secretariat’s male progeny were forgettable on the racetrack.
So all that is left are their own unforgettable racing accomplishments.
For Zenyatta: 19 victories in 20 starts, including the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Classic, four Eclipse Awards including 2010 Horse of the Year honors, 2016 induction into racings Hall of Fame, and a mere head away from perfection.
For Shirreffs: 596 wins in 3,589 starts, a 16.6 first-place percentage and the admiration of all who knew and worked for him.“To sleep! perchance to dream,” said Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
One can only hope that in his final dreams, trainer John Shirreffs may have dreamed his beloved Zenyatta closing fast as she always did and finally overtaking rival Blame at the wire in the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Classic, dreamed her notching her second consecutive victory in that ultimate test of North American racing excellence and granting immortality to both Zenyatta and John Shirreffs.
