The Listed MRC Merson Cooper Stakes (1000m) at Caulfield on Saturday featured colts and fillies with the girls coming out on top as Rosemont Stud’s homebred Starspangledbanner filly Palm Angel was too nippy for the late closing Wootton Bassett (GB) filly Wiltshire Square.

Palm Angel wisn the Listed Merson Cooper Stakes on debut – image Scott Barbour Racing Photos

Trained by Jason Warren and ridden by Ethan Brown, Palm Angel looked a natural juvenile travelling smoothly throughout in the lead and was too strong at the line scoring by three-quarters of a length.

“We’ve liked this filly a lot from the first day we started galloping her,” said Jason Warren.

“We didn’t want to go the early crow, but she’s by Starspangledbanner out of a Pivotal mare and we had a bit of fun with a mare called Brooklyn Hustle bred on the same cross and I said to the boys at Rosemont, the whole team, she’s pretty special and she’s just shown that at the trials.

“We put her in a trial at Balnarring the other week against the older horses and she cleaned them up. We brought her here Tuesday and she never turned a hair, she’s very much the professional and she’s an exciting filly.

“She’ll have a freshen up now and then we’ll prepare for the Blue Diamond lead-up races.”

Palm Angel is a half-brother to stakes-placed Narbold and is the second winner from three to race from blue-blood Pivotal mare Noblest (GB), a winning sister to dual Group I winning miler Peeress, the grand-dam of this year’s Group I Newbury Lockinge Stakes winner Audience as well as Group III winners Esquire and Dark Lady.

Noblest was bought by Rosemont Stud at the 2016 Arqana December Breeding Stock Sale for 125,000 euros.

Palm Angel is the 48^th stakes-winner for Starspangledbanner, who covered Noblest again in 2023 resulting in another filly born on August 28 and she is now in foal to another of the Coolmore sires in Churchill (IRE).

Palm Angel is the third stakes-winner for Starspangledbanner from a daughter of Pivotal joining Northern Hemisphere bred Spangled and also Aussie Group II winner Brooklyn Hustle, who was also bred and raced by Rosemont Stud.