Palmer considering Deauville or Newmarket for Fitzella

Hugo Palmer is weighing up his options with Fitzella after her impressive victory in the Princess Margaret Stakes at Ascot last month, with France and Newmarket on the radar.

The daughter of Too Darn Hot broke her maiden at Haydock and was not disgraced in the Albany Stakes at the Royal meeting when fourth behind Karl Burke’s smart Venetian Sun.

But she came out on top on her return to the Berkshire circuit when beating Staya by a length and Palmer is now plotting where to send her next before a trip to the Breeders’ Cup.

The Malpas-based handler said: “We were very pleased with that. She seems to have come out of it in very good order.

“She’s already had four starts. It’s a question of how many more times do we want to run her this season. She’s kind of grown and changed all year and I think she is a filly with a future, I don’t think she is just a two-year-old.

“In my mind there will probably be no more than two more goes this year. She is potentially a filly for the Breeders’ Cup, so that possibly means just one more European run. We want to do everything we can to make sure that’s a winning European run before we go to California.

“In my head I thought maybe the Prix du Calvados (at Deauville on August 24), which is where Simmering went last year after winning the Princess Margaret and I thought that looked quite a nice fit.

“Predicting and reading the ground in France is tricky and she does want top of the ground, but it’s very hot in August in Deauville and it dries out very quickly being by the beach and by the river and we’ll just have to be on weather watch.

“If that didn’t work I thought probably the Rockfel (at Newmarket on September 26) would be an obvious target, it’ll be another month later but the Cambridgeshire meeting tends to throw up quite quick ground, still being relatively early.

“She is in the Moyglare as well. But the Moyglare being that jump to Group One company might be the hardest way to keep her unbeaten, to make sure her next run is a winning one.

“Any Group winning two-year-old from this point of the season onwards, you’re thinking about the Guineas. There’s a lot of water to throw under the bridge between now and then but that’s what we’d like her to be.”