by Eric Haughan

Chester, PA — Orange Bigi captured her first win for owner Liisa Vatanen with a speedy score of 1:57.1 at Harrah’s Chester this past Monday afternoon (July 4) in a $20,000 Pennsylvania Stallion Series race.

Mike Lachance handled the reins of Orange Bigi, who served notice of her ability a fortnight ago with a second-place finish at the Meadowlands in a maiden race. Lachance and Orange Bigi chased down Migisi (David Miller) in the stretch to score by less than a length.

“She got away third, came first up and sat outside the leader until the straight; she won by three-quarters of a length in the end with little urging, Mike was just tipping her, really,” said trainer Ian ‘Joe’ Hanney, before detailing what he and Liisa have planned next for the 3-year-old SJ’s Caviar-Emerald City miss.

“The Stallion Series is a step under the Sire Stakes level; the Sire Stakes is the top level. If she gets a bit more experience she could step up. She’s still a bit green so we dropped her into this series and we’ll see how she does.

“She missed the first two stages of The Stallion Series, the next one is at Pocono on the 19th of this month; if she wins or comes second she’ll definitely be in the final at the Meadows in September which has a purse of $50,000.

“She’s also paid into the Keystone Classic at Chester and we’ll maybe aim her at some of the late closers at Lexington later in the year, too.”

Liisa and Joe came about the horse quite by chance, as Joe, a trainer for Joe Holloway, explains.

“The filly was bred in Italy, she came here to a friend of mine, Giacomo Francisci — who is a trainer for Don Swick — and he trained her for an Italian owner for a little while. She didn’t do a whole lot as a 2-year-old because she got sick, so she was turned out.

“She was at Continental Farm in New Jersey, Giacomo was gone to Florida with Don for the winter and then one day he called me, asked if I remembered that filly he had and would Liisa and I like to buy her. So we went, Liisa bought her and about four days later her paperwork arrived from Milan.

“She hasn’t really done a thing wrong since we got her. The training track here (at Showplace Farms) is a five-eighths and one of the turns is a half-mile turn. She trots around that in :28 seconds so we had no worries about her going to the smaller track at Chester on Monday.

“Mike (Lachance) likes her, his son Patrick is stabled at Showplace and Mike helps us out a bit with her if we need her trained or anything — he’s very helpful and encouraging like that. He hadn’t planned to go to Chester on Monday but he was good enough to go for us and he picked up some more drives, naturally enough.

“Bigi might race once more at the Meadowlands before the next TSS race at Pocono.”