Fully Subscribed towers over small field for Spinster

Only five horses were entered in the Spinster Stakes, the Grade 1 feature Sunday at Keeneland. Regaled will be scratched to start, as intended all along, in the Delaware Handicap. That leaves four runners, and if Fully Subscribed comes right back to her Personal Ensign performance on Aug. 29, the $650,000 Spinster is a one-horse race.

Four-year-old Fully Subscribed has raced nine times and has never been worse than third, with five wins and three runner-up finishes. Last November, she made her stakes debut and won the Grade 2 Mother Goose by 4 1/2 lengths. In May, Fully Subscribed launched her 2026 campaign with a second-place finish in the Grade 1 La Troienne at Churchill, a good race, hardly great, as was her second on June 5 in the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps at Saratoga. Divisional leader Nitrogen walloped her by almost 13 lengths.

Fully Subscribed earned a then career-best 98 Beyer Speed Figure beating the good filly Scottish Lassie by a half-length in the Grade 2 Shuvee, but her Personal Ensign – that came from a different planet.

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Fully Subscribed stalked the pace, took command of the 1 1/8-mile race in upper stretch, and stormed home a 9 3/4-length winner, her Beyer skyrocketing to 106. Not a fluke, said Chad Brown, who trains Fully Subscribed for Klaravich Stables.

“I always thought it was in her,” Brown said. “This is the way that horse trains all the time and carries herself all the time – as a high-class racehorse. I think we finally have her there. She’s a major contender in the Spinster and if she comes out of it okay a major contender in the Breeders’ Cup.”

Fully Subscribed has never started at Keeneland, but Brown has started 237 horses over the Keeneland main track, and suspects Fully Subscribed will like it well enough. Flavien Prat retains the mount, and Fully Subscribed will he a heavy odds-on favorite in the 1 1/8-mile Spinster.

Speedy 4-year-old Snowyte will set the pace, as she did in the Personal Ensign and Shuvee. After running into divisional stalwart Splendora last out in the Locust Grove at Churchill Downs, losing to her by more than eight lengths, Immersive, the 2024 2-year-old filly champion, now encounters a fully formed Fully Subscribed.

The fifth Spinster horse, 3-year-old Counting Stars, could give an in-form Fully Subscribed a tussle, and gets four pounds from her older rival, but she must rebound from a decidedly subpar showing Aug. 22 at Saratoga in the Grade 1 Alabama. Favored at just under 2-5, Counting Stars set a slow pace but had no homestretch spark, passed in the final furlong by My Guns Loaded and Measure, fillies she’d have crushed earlier in the summer.

Winner of the Fantasy Stakes at Oaklawn in April, Counting Stars didn’t get a great trip finishing third in the Kentucky Oaks to Always a Runner, but rose to the top of her division thumping Always a Runner and everyone else in the Grade 1 Acorn in June and the Grade 1 Coaching Club American Oaks in July.

“I still think she’s the best 3-year-old filly in the country,” trainer Mark Casse said. “I think her Alabama was subpar. It was a combination of a couple huge races back to back, and then coming back in four weeks. I gave her plenty of time to rebound off that race.”

Casse and Counting Stars’s owner, West Point Thoroughbreds, left the door open to resting Counting Stars the remainder of this year and aiming for 2027. The filly has been on a steady racing pattern for more than a year.

“I was kind of 50-50 whether we were going to run in this race. She’s been going and going. They put no pressure on me at all to run, but she worked so good [Sept. 23 at Belmont] I figured she’s happy right now and is going to run really well. It’s time to find out if she can play with the big girls, whether she’s good enough to go to the Breeders’ Cup,” Casse said.

Casse also trains Nitrogen, early favorite for the Breeders’ Cup Distaff – unless Fully Subscribed dazzles again in the Spinster.

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