Group One winner Famous Seamus has won for the first time in more than a year, adding another weight-for-age victory to his resume in the Kevin Heffernan Stakes.
The Noel Mayfield-Smith trained seven-year-old has had excuses in his two previous starts in Melbourne but showed his quality in Saturday’s race at Sandown.
Famous Seamus
After settling outside the leader Java, Famous Seamus ($8.50) sprinted to the front and had a big enough advantage to hold off Generalife who finished second in the race for the second-straight year.
It was Famous Seamus’ first win since the Group Two Premiere Stakes 13 months ago and the sixth stakes win of a career that includes a Group One victory in last year’s BTC Cup.
“We’ve never lost faith in him. He’s just given everything every time he races. He deserved this more than any horse today,” Emma Mayfield-Smith, representing her husband Noel, said.
The win gave Kerrin McEvoy an early winning double from the first three races after also guiding two-year-old Jackson to victory in the opening event.
“He hadn’t won for a little while but he’s got a good record at weight-for-age and that gave me some nice confidence going into today,” McEvoy said.
“You could question some of the others at weight-for-age. He was drawn nicely, we got a nice run and he was full of running coming out of the dip and I knew he was going to be hard to beat.”
Generalife ($3.20) came from midfield and got within a long neck of Famous Seamus while Gracious Prospect ($41) battled on for third, another 1-1/4 lengths away.
Favourite Under The Louvre tracked Generalife and got to the outside but could only manage to run fourth.
