Sulek snares $500,000 Cup Week feature

New Zealand-bred gelding Sulek scored the third and most lucrative win of his career when he took out the A$500,000 Cirka Melbourne Cup Carnival Country Final (1600m) on Oaks Day at Flemington on Thursday.

The Dominic Sutton-trained four-year-old has now had 11 starts for three wins, three placings and A$417,725 in stakes.

A smart maiden winner as an early spring three-year-old last year, Sulek went on to run third in the Listed Bendigo Guineas (1400m), fifth in the Listed Amanda Elliott (1400m) and seventh in the Gr.2 Sandown Guineas (1600m).

Sutton gave Sulek a spell after a sixth placing in Flemington in May, and he began his four-year-old season with a fourth over 1200m at Ballarat at the end of September. A strong second-up victory at Geelong on October 21 put him right on course for Thursday’s Flemington target, and Sutton was delighted to see him deliver the desired result.

“It’s really good prize-money for these owners, who put a lot in,” he said. “I was saying pre-race that it’s nice not to run into the likes of Ciaron Maher. A race like this is a really good initiative, and we got a huge result.

“I’ve got to say a big thank you to the team back at home. They’ve put in a lot of hours, worked very hard. We’ve got a big group of owners here from all around the world – from the UK, from New Zealand.

“It was always a plan from the get-go to try and get him here. They’ve flown in to see him race today. He runs in Stuart Andrew’s colours. They’ve actually won the Grand National back in the UK, these colours. So they’re very lucky, and I’m just over the moon to have got the result.”

Sulek was ridden by Billy Egan and settled midfield with cover before pouncing in the straight and scoring by three-quarters of a length.

“It actually worked out really well,” Egan said. “I just wanted to be in that line with nothing surrounding us but still covered up with cover in front of us and just produce him to show a turn of foot.

“He sustained his gallop a little better than I thought he would. When he got there, he levelled up with the other horse and thought that might be it. I got stuck into him and he really wanted to find the line and get away with it.”

Sutton said Sulek has been something of a work in progress.

“He's always been a bit of a thinker,” he said. “You can see he still just wants to lug in a little bit, especially when he's the widest horse on the track. At Geelong we smothered him up and he came through and he went gun-barrel straight, and I told Billy to try and do the same thing today. He had a sticky draw this time, but he got into the three-wide line and he presented.

“He always looked like the winner, it was just a matter of when he was going to get there and going straight. He's definitely been a quirky horse, but he's taken a lot of confidence from these wins. We underestimate what confidence does for horses, and he's a nice horse moving forward.

“I think he likes to be ridden with confidence and keep the bridle in his mouth and allowing him to have a turn of foot. If you present him too early and try to make a long, sustained run, it doesn't seem to eventuate.

“So we came up with a plan of just trying to hold on to him for as long as possible and use that turn of foot that we know that he has, and it's really worked in the last two starts.”

Sulek was bred by the Dowager Duchess of Bedford and Waikato Stud, and he is out of the O’Reilly mare Tiff And Co. He stems from Bloomsbury Stud’s famed Mrs Moss family, with his granddam being the Group Three-winning Nashwan mare Myself.

Tim Askew, who now operates as a Ready to Run Sale vendor under the banner of Pamina Lodge, paid $70,000 to buy Sulek from Waikato Stud’s Book 1 draft at Karaka 2024. Later re-offered by KB Bloodstock at the 2024 Ready to Run Sale, he was sold to Sutton Racing and Byron Rodgers for $420,000.