A switch to a seaside environment is fuelling hopes that Australia's unluckiest stayer Leica Falcon can turn his career around this campaign.Formerly trained by Richard Freyer at Corowa, the out-of-form eight-year-old joined Jarrod McLean's Warrnambool stables in November and will resume in Wednesday's William Pearson Handicap (1500m) at Sandown.McLean said he was looking forward to seeing Leica Falcon in action and while he didn't rate him a winning chance he expected he would run well."I am go

A switch to a seaside environment is fuelling hopes that Australia's unluckiest stayer Leica Falcon can turn his career around this campaign.

Formerly trained by Richard Freyer at Corowa, the out-of-form eight-year-old joined Jarrod McLean's Warrnambool stables in November and will resume in Wednesday's William Pearson Handicap (1500m) at Sandown.

McLean said he was looking forward to seeing Leica Falcon in action and while he didn't rate him a winning chance he expected he would run well.

"I am going to the races hopeful more than confident and looking forward to seeing him under race pressure," McLean said.

"I would be disappointed if he let us down. I don't think we will walk away disappointed."

He said Leica Falcon was sound and he'd had a long, slow build-up to Wednesday's race.

"I have had him since November, then we gave him a nice break and started fresh with him in early January," McLean said.

He said he had been trained without any special consideration and, like the rest of his team, worked mostly on the beach.

"We haven't done anything outstanding with him yet but he's had a couple of trials and done everything right in them," McLean said.

McLean is getting a reputation for taking on tried horses and last year resurrected the career of Kibbutz to finish ninth in the Melbourne Cup.

As a four-year-old, Leica Falcon was hailed as Australia's next great stayer when he charged home for a luckless fourth to Makybe Diva in the 2005 Melbourne Cup and was just as impressive when fifth to Railings in the Caulfield Cup the same year.

He looked to have it all in front of him but he broke down with a tendon injury in July 2006 when favourite for the Melbourne Cup and missed the 2007 spring when stranded at Freyer's Corowa stables during the equine influenza crisis.

McLean said that the way Leica Falcon worked gave him away as a "great staying horse".

"I am really looking forward to getting him up to a trip," he said.

"He has got a real good head carriage and must have an enormous set of lungs because you can't give him enough work.

"He's happy, sound, appears genuine and relaxes beautifully in his work.

"He's in a good spot at the moment.

The only concern for McLean is soft ground and the Sandown track was rated slow on Tuesday.

"The way his action is I would be surprised if he is effective on heavy ground," McLean said.

"He may have handled it as a young horse but I don't reckon he's comfortable on it now."

The winner of five of his 21 starts, Leica Falcon's 2005 Melbourne Cup run took his rating to 105 but since then he has raced 11 times and finished worse than midfield on each occasion, plunging his rating back to 82.

At Sandown he is topweight with 59kg and Craig Newitt will ride him for the first time.

"The horse is fit but he just needs racing to bring him on now," McLean said.

"We will get through this race and then we have the option of taking him across to Adelaide second or third-up for something over 2000 metres."

McLean also hasn't ruled out another Cup campaign for Leica Falcon, even though he would be nine.

"You never say never," McLean said.

"We will just let him tell us where is going."