Simon and Ed Crisford’s talented Zanthos bounced back to winning ways with a dominant front-running performance in the Rockfel Stakes at Newmarket.

A €1,000,000 purchase from the Arqana May Breeze-Up sale, Zanthos began to pay back her hefty price tag with a stylish debut victory on the July Course.

The daughter of Sioux Nation was then sent off a 4/11 chance to make it two from two under a penalty at Leicester, but after pulling hard in the early stages, she proved no match for the reopposing Touleen.

The pair headed to Newmarket to do battle once more, with this time Touleen the 6/5 market leader to remain unbeaten, but unlike at Leicester, Zanthos always looked in command under Oisin Murphy, who opted to allow his mount to use her stride against the near side rail from an early stage.

Buick moved his charge across to track the leader, but the warning signs were showing as she failed to pick up coming out of the dip and all the while, Zanthos continued to gallop on strongly up front.

Ed Walker's impressive debut winner The Prettiest Star kept on well to press her in the closing stages, but Zanthos had enough in hand crossing the line, with the winning margin eventually three parts of a length.

"We just said to Oisin to keep her happy and let her use her stride," said Ed Crisford.

"I thought she was maybe doing a bit too much in the early part, but she was travelling so well.

"I was a bit nervous the last half-furlong, but she stuck on well and she's a classy filly."

On suffering the reverse at Leicester, Crisford said: "We didn't realise the pace was going to be that slow and we'd tried to do something different.

"It turned into a two-furlong sprint. Whether that suited Touleen that day I'm not sure, but we put our filly behind, and she was doing too much.

"Oisin told us to put a line through the race and to move on, so we were confident we were going to run well today but maybe not beat the Leicester winner.

"She's obviously a very talented filly with a lot of ability and hopefully she can turn into a proper filly."

Paddy Power cut the winner to 16/1 (from 40s) for next year's 1000 Guineas, with the Crisford team now likely to wait until next season until testing their fillies' stamina over the trip.

He added: "We always felt she'd definitely stay a mile, but today it looked like she was tying up coming up the hill.

"The sensible thing is probably to put her away and bring her back for a Fred Darling or a Nell Gwyn in the spring and see where we go from there.

"We always felt she would stay a mile, the riders at home felt she would stay a mile and Oisin feels she could stay a mile.

"She's a good quality filly and an exciting filly for next year."