Song team favouring Windsor option
Soviet Song’s Royal Ascot target is more likely to be the Windsor Forest Stakes rather than the Queen Anne Stakes.
Connections of the six-year-old mare are leaning more towards the Group Two contest for fillies and mares instead of the Goup One race which is open to both sexes. Both races are over a mile.
The multiple Group One winner, owned and bred by the Elite Racing Club and trained by James Fanshawe, was put through her paces today.
“She worked this morning and James is happy enough with her,” said Elite’s racing manager Matthew Budden.
“We are looking more at the Windsor Forest at this stage. James is favouring going for the easier option before hopefully bringing her back up to the Group Ones again.
“After Royal Ascot I would have thought the Falmouth Stakes at Newmarket’s July meeting would be her next race.”
Soviet Song has won the Falmouth for the last two years but has yet to strike at Royal Ascot despite attempts during the last three summers.
She was third in the Windsor Forest at Royal Ascot at York last year on her first outing for nine months, having gone down by only a neck to Refuse To Bend in the Queen Anne in 2004 and being second to Russian Rhythm in the Coronation Stakes in 2003.
However, the first of her five Group One wins did come at Ascot, in the Fillies’ Mile in September 2002.
