Thursday 25th June 2009
Fanshawe points Spacious at Etihad Airways Falmouth Stakes
James Fanshawe has an enviable record in the £200,000 Group One Etihad Airways Falmouth Stakes and the Newmarket trainer is hoping to enhance that when Spacious takes her Royal Ascot winning form to the July Course on Wednesday, July 8.
The prestigious mile contest for fillies and mares is the highlight on the opening day of Newmarket’s three-day Champagne Lanson July Festival - Wednesday, July 8 to Friday, July 10.
Fanshawe is eying a fourth success in the race that he first won with Macadamia in 2003. He followed up the following year with the crack miler Soviet Song and completed the hat-trick in 2005 when the popular mare landed back-to-back triumphs.
Spacious, a strapping filly who has inherited a fluent long stride from her sire Nayef, returned to the form of her second place in the 2008 Stan James-sponsored 1000 Guineas when winning the Group Two Windsor Forest Stakes over a mile at Royal Ascot on June 17.
Fanshawe revealed this morning: “We are aiming Spacious at the Falmouth Stakes at this stage. I haven’t done much with her since the Windsor Forest but she looks very well for her run and she seems in good form.
“She was second in the 1000 Guineas last year and I just think that took a lot out of her. I think what everyone hopes is that she benefits from having won. She was very game at Ascot and she seems to have come out of the race fine.
“She prefers a galloping track to a tight one and her second in the Guineas on the Rowley Mile suggests that the July Course will be fine for her. She’s won on soft and good to firm and I think she just doesn’t want extremes of going.”
