Cy Fair, Slay The Day renew rivalry in Mamzelle Stakes rematch

Slay The Day did more than spoil Cy Fair’s return in the Limestone Stakes. She set a stakes record in 1:01.99 on firm turf at Keeneland, won by a neck over Sapphire Beach, and left Cy Fair third, turning a comeback race into a rivalry worth watching again at Churchill Downs.

The rematch comes in the seventh running of the $300,000 Mamzelle presented by Kentucky Proud, a race listed as Race 11 on the 12-race Thurby card with a 6:22 p.m. Eastern post time. Cy Fair tops the field of 11 from post 5 for trainer George Weaver with Irad Ortiz Jr. aboard, while Slay The Day breaks from post 8 for trainer Brian Lynch with John Velazquez. The Mamzelle, inaugurated in 1997, was reestablished in 2019 for 3-year-old fillies and stretched to 5 1/2 furlongs in 2023, which makes this an exacting sprint test, not a soft landing.

Cy Fair still owns the stronger headline résumé. She won the 2025 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint at Del Mar by three-quarters of a length, becoming only the second filly to capture the race, and did it in :56.02 while lifting her earnings to $780,205. The same short turf profile has already fit her before, too. She won her Saratoga debut on July 10, 2025, at 5 1/2 furlongs by 3 1/2 lengths, then later was nailed by a neck in the Bolton Landing at the same distance. Her two career losses have both come at this sprint trip, which makes the Churchill route a perfect test of whether the distance or the race shape is the real issue.

Slay The Day, meanwhile, has built her case the hard way. She started on dirt in her first three races before Flying Dutchmen Racing president Hunter Rankin and the barn moved her to turf, where she responded with consecutive wins. Brian Lynch said after the Limestone that he believed she had found her surface, and the record-breaking effort at Keeneland backed that up. She did not just get a lucky setup, she finished the job against a proven stakes filly who was making her first start since the Breeders’ Cup.

That is what makes this Churchill rematch so attractive. Cy Fair brings the bigger reputation and the proven turn of foot; Slay The Day brings the sharper current form and the confidence of having already beaten her rival at the same basic trip. With Ortiz and Velazquez in the irons, and with posts 5 and 8 likely to shape the race’s early rhythm, the decisive factor may be simple: who gets the cleaner trip when the field turns for home. Churchill Downs has set up a spring sprint that should tell us whether the Limestone was an upset or the start of a new pecking order.