Godiva

Godiva (1937–1940) was a British Thoroughbred racehorse, best known for winning two Classics in 1940. The filly won six times from eight races in a racing career which lasted from 1939 until June 1940. After winning three times as a two-year-old she was unbeaten in 1940, winning the 1000 Guineas over one mile at Newmarket and a wartime substitute Oaks over one and a half miles at the same course a month later. Godiva died within five months of her final race. She has been described as one of the best British racemares of the 20th century. Background Godiva was a bay mare bred by her owner Esmond Harmsworth who later became better known as Lord Rothermere. In 1938 Harmsworth sold off most of his bloodstock interests, but kept three horses, one of which was the yearling filly later named Godiva. One of the horses he sold was Godiva's pregnant dam Carpet Slipper. The foal being carried by Carpet Slipper was Windsor Slipper, the 1942 Irish Triple Crown winner. Godiva was from the second crop of foals sired by the 1933 Derby winner Hyperion, the first of whose six Sires' championships in 1940 was largely due to the filly's successes. As a grand-daughter of the broodmare Simon's Shoes, Godiva came from the same branch of Thoroughbred Family 5-h which later produced the notable stallions Sadler's Wells and Nureyev. Godiva was sent into training with William Rose "Willie" Jarvis at his Egerton House stable in Newmarket, Suffolk. Godiva was a temperamental and difficult filly who often gave trouble at the starting gate, but she formed a strong bond with her teenage exercise rider Douglas Marks. When Jarvis's stable jockey John Crouch was killed in a flying accident in June 1939, it was decided that Marks would ride the filly in her races. Racing career