Who was the last filly to come in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in the Kentucky Derby before Eight Belles?

Question

Who was the last filly to come in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in the Kentucky Derby before Eight Belles?

Answer 1

Yes, Winning Colors won in 1988.  3 fillies ran the Derby between Winning Colors' win and Eight Belles' 2nd.  The best of them was Excellent Meeting who finished 5th in 1999.

Running fillies in the Derby was not always as taboo as it is now.  There was a big drop off of fillies in the Derby starting in the 1940s.  There were 2 fillies entered in the first running of the Derby and there were fillies consistently entered for the first decade of the Derby.  And there were a lot of fillies entered in the 1910s.  But no filly had been entered for 20 years when Genuine Risk entered and won in 1980.

Answer 2

Winning Colors, she won the Derby in 1988.