“Speciosa in front as they race inside the final furlong, chased by Nasheej and Confidential Lady. Speciosa, for a special result in the 1,000 Guineas. Speciosa wins…for Pam Sly!”Even two decades on, the replay from that memorable Newmarket afternoon cannot fail to stir the emotions, the sight of Sly's pride and joy surging towards the winning post and the sheer incredulity in the voice of Channel 4 Racing's lead commentator, Simon Holt, as the impossible became possible right before his very eyes.This was the 1,000 Guineas, after all. Sly, who famously described herself as “just a Fenland farmer” in the build-up to this day of all days, had never won a Group race before Speciosa arrived on the scene, never mind allowed herself to dream of winning one of Britain's five Classics, typically the preserve of the sport's richest and most powerful.The previous afternoon's 2,000 Guineas, for example, had delivered a far more routine chain of events, with the exception of its winner's post-race antics. Certainly, there was nothing ordinary about George Washington, as Emma Berry recalled so vividly in her tribute last week, but the sight of the Coolmore partners holding a Classic prize aloft afterwards was – and remains now – a far from unfamiliar sight.By contrast, three cheers for the successful trainer from those gathered around the Newmarket winner's enclosure is saved for precious few.Sly admits to remembering little of the adulation that engulfed her that afternoon as we sit down to reminisce about those glory years, the octogenarian trainer perching on a hay bale in the front yard of her Thorney base. It's the kind of spring morning in the Fenland village that makes one feel lucky to be alive, luckier still following half an hour in the company of the now-23-year-old Speciosa and her year-older paddock companion, Circus Rose.Make no mistake, Speciosa is the boss of this lush pasture, a pecking order she is keen to impress upon her two visitors from TDN Europe. At one stage, with nostrils flared and tail raised, she begins a gentle charge at the camera pointed in her direction before, thankfully, abandoning any thoughts of a collision at the eleventh hour. Whilst ultimately harmless, it makes one feel lucky to be alive for a rather different reason, once having emerged from the encounter unscathed.An unfussed Sly has seen it all before. “She still flies about like a two-year-old, bucking and kicking. It's amazing, but she's a lovely old girl, really,” Sly says of Speciosa's feisty attitude, something which stood out from the day that the trainer first laid eyes on the Danehill Dancer filly at the Doncaster Breeze-up Sale.“I think she was a bit sparky then,” Sly says of those all-important first impressions. “I went with a friend, Roger Marley, who used to ride for me as a National Hunt jockey. I said, 'Look, I've only got 30 grand to spend.' So, we went to see Willie Browne, who said, 'I've got this filly here.' She wasn't a small two-year-old. She was a nice size, a good 16 hands, and she just took a bit of time. As I say, she was a nice filly, just a little bit sparky. She only made 30 grand, which was spot on for us.”Explaining how Speciosa's spirited nature manifested itself when she was brought home to Thorney, Sly continues, “She gave no difficulty training her at all. It was just in her box. If she didn't like you, she would kick you, and she used to kick the wall as well. In the end, we lined the walls with some rubber stuff so that she didn't hurt herself. But no, she was very easy to ride, always well-behaved.”Compared to the many race-ready juveniles that come out of the breeze-up sector, Speciosa proved more of a work in progress in her early starts for Sly, following an encouraging debut second at Ripon with lesser efforts at Nottingham and Leicester. Even when she opened her account at the fourth attempt at Beverley, she again showed signs of temperament, flashing her tail and hanging so badly left that she ended up against the stands rail.However, for jockey Micky Fenton, who was riding Speciosa at Beverley for just the second time in a race, it was about getting to know the filly whom he describes as having “a bark worse than her bite”. Crucially, what he did learn impressed him to the extent that he encouraged Sly to aim high with her would-be stable star during the second half of her two-year-old campaign.“I like figuring out horses and, after riding her a couple of times, I realised that you're not going to bully this one,” says Fenton. “You had to let her think that she was the boss. It just took her a couple of runs for everything to fall into place.“When she won at Beverley, I said to Pam, 'Just ignore her handicap mark and go straight into a black-type race.' I don't think that Pam had saddled a Group runner before.“I'd won the [G2] May Hill Stakes before for James Given and this filly was just as good. She ran really well there [beaten a length into third] and I think she would have won if I'd made the running. Then, I'd won the Rockfel Stakes before on Germane and I told Pam that this filly is just as good as her as well. I really thought she'd win that.”He wasn't wrong. Making every yard of the running, 20/1 shot Speciosa dug deep when challenged late on to win the G2 Rockfel by a neck and provide Sly with by far the biggest success of her training career to that point. It was also the first time that Speciosa had encountered ground with some give in it, highlighting a preference for ease underfoot that would stand her in good stead early the following year.In the meantime, Sly and her fellow owners – son Michael and family friend Tom Davies – were given a big decision to make when they were offered telephone numbers to part with their potential Classic contender. Sly said at the time that she advised her fellow owners to take the money and run, but she concedes now that they were in a fortunate position which allowed them to continue enjoying the journey.“I suppose we'd never had a horse like that before,” Sly says of resisting the temptation to sell. “We all had a house to live in and we didn't really need the money at the time. I think it was quite a substantial amount but, no, we're glad we kept her.”Decision made, it was all systems go then in the spring of 2006 with a view to returning to Newmarket for the 1,000 Guineas. In the immediate aftermath of Speciosa's Rockfel triumph, she was still available to back at 50/1 for that Classic, but those odds were halved when she returned to the Rowley Mile to kick off her three-year-old campaign with victory in the G3 Nell Gwyn Stakes. There she gave 3lb and a one-length beating to her eight rivals, despite reprising her party trick of hanging left under pressure.Naturally, Speciosa was then the subject of plenty of media interest in the build-up to the 1,000 Guineas.“It didn't seem to bother me a lot,” Sly says of the intense situation that she suddenly found herself in. “I think it was just that the press are quite relentless, aren't they? They kept coming in their herds and they'd sit around the kitchen table. I don't think they enjoyed that much!”Certainly, a visit to Sly's unfussy yard would have provided a rather different experience for racing hacks more accustomed to the delights of Ballydoyle in the build-up to a Classic. As it was, the main opposition to Speciosa in the 1,000 Guineas did indeed hail from that familiar source, at least if the betting was anything to go by.Twenty-four hours after George Washington's virtuoso display in the 2,000 Guineas, the dual Group 1-winning two-year-old Rumplestiltskin headed postward as the 3/1 favourite for the fillies' equivalent, bidding to complete the same Classic double for Kieren Fallon, Aidan O'Brien and the Coolmore partners as that accomplished with Footstepsinthesand and Virginia Waters the previous year.For many, there was a distinct sense of inevitability about what we were about to witness, but not in the eyes of those closest to Speciosa.“Didn't she go off at 12/1 or something?” asks Sly. “And I couldn't work that out. She'd won two Group races there on the course, and yet, they obviously didn't think she was good enough, did they?”One man in no doubt when it came to his mount's credentials was Fenton, who had his confidence boosted when the heavens opened the evening before the race.“I was very confident that she was the one to beat,” Fenton confesses. “I was at Haydock when George Washington won on the Saturday. By the time I got back to Newmarket, it had just started to rain, and it got heavier and heavier through the night. It had been very quick when George Washington won, but it all came together for our filly.“I wasn't worried about her price. It was probably better because some of the jockeys ignored me in the race and let me do my own thing,” he adds, now reliving the near-one minute and 40 seconds of the 1,000 Guineas that saw the Limerick man become a British Classic-winning jockey.“When I got to the three pole, I said, 'Right, come on.' I kicked her in the belly and was in full flight by the two pole. There was no catching her then. I had planned to kick at the three pole just to surprise everyone, because I knew she had a kick and they would find it hard to peg her back. It just went to plan perfectly and, for me, it was a relief more than anything that she won.”Sly, meanwhile, admits that her memories of that career high are now something of a blur, although one exchange with Sir Mark Prescott, trainer of the runner-up, Confidential Lady, won't be forgotten in a hurry.“Golly, it's so long ago – 20 years ago. I can hardly remember yesterday!” the trainer laughs. “When I came home…I don't know. I had to go and have a walk through the spinney on my own with my dogs to try and take it all in. The house was full of people eating fish and chips. That was our party, really, and it was just amazing.“I know that the bookmakers in Whittlesey weren't very happy because it totally cleaned them out. They couldn't pay everybody. There were lots of people who had new bathrooms, new cookers.“Oh, I'll tell you who was upset: Sir Mark. Because we beat Confidential Lady, didn't we? He came up to me and said, 'Oh, well done, but you've ruined my f****** day!' We still go on about that to each other.”Confidential Lady would go on to have her day in the sun when landing the following month's Prix de Diane but, on Guineas day, she was no match for Speciosa, who was so impressive, winning by two and a half lengths, that it's hard to think that she would never win another race. In nine subsequent starts, she produced her best effort as a four-year-old when finishing a two-length second to the outstanding Peeping Fawn in the G1 Pretty Polly Stakes at the Curragh.After retiring Speciosa at the end of her four-year-old campaign, Sly has trained five of her sons and daughters to win races under Rules in the near-two decades since, with the pick of them on ratings being her final foal by Cracksman, Wintercrack.Wintercrack recently visited King Of Change for her maiden cover, while her half-sisters Asteroidea (Sea The Stars) and Specialty (Oasis Dream) have given the Sly family black-type performers such as Astral Beau (Brazen Beau) and Eileendover (Canford Cliffs), both granddaughters of Speciosa now tasked with trying to produce the next star graduate from the Fens.Asteroidea's Astral Beau counted the Listed Doncaster Mile Stakes among her five career wins, as well as finishing third in the G2 Dahlia Stakes, while Specialty's Eileendover won a Listed bumper at Market Rasen and was also third in the Listed Further Flight Stakes on the Flat.It's quite the legacy that Speciosa will have left behind in this small corner of Cambridgeshire when the light on this perennially sparky mare does eventually go out, not that she shows any signs of slowing down yet.“She's full of it, isn't she?” Sly continues. “Hopefully, she'll go on for a few more years yet. We're glad we kept her because now we've got all of her daughters and bred from them. Most of them are more nice in nature in their boxes than her! Asteroidea is still breeding and we're going to breed from Wintercrack. The boys weren't quite so good for some reason, but we kept the fillies and they've all bred winners, so we're doing all right, really.“I didn't get any more horses just because she won [the 1,000 Guineas] or anything like that, which was good. I didn't really want any more. I was quite happy with what I had.”Twenty years on, Sly still cuts a contented figure, training a small string of horses largely dominated by her homebreds. Staffing issues may force her to rethink the viability of the operation in the years to come, but don't ever expect to hear her complaining about her lot in life.“I suppose it's a large piece, isn't it?” Sly says of Speciosa's role in it all. “It's made a lot of difference by having all these lovely young horses I've got now and grandchildren out of her. If only she knew what she'd got!“I mean, who would have the luck of buying a Guineas horse? The whole thing is luck. You can be as clever as you like but, if you haven't got the luck with you…”From one lucky morning at Doncaster to today's here in the Fenlands, here's to the marvel that is Speciosa, the sparky filly who made the impossible possible.The post ‘A Special Result in the 1,000 Guineas’ – Speciosa and Pam Sly, 20 Years On appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.