Wodonga on a Tuesday is hardly a traditional dress rehearsal for the spring carnival but emerging trainer Dom Sutton is hoping a win off Broadway can set the tone for a successful few months.
The Flemington trainer notched his 21st career win when Swing Your Magic broke his maiden, and while the thrill didn’t quite rival that of winning a Group 1 in his second year of training, it wasn’t far off.
Sutton’s breakout moment came in this year’s Australian Guineas when Feroce stormed to victory at Flemington, six months after narrowly missing in the Caulfield Guineas.
That Group 1 win has only served to heighten the pressure on the young trainer’s shoulders.
The truth is, in an unforgiving racing jurisdiction like Victoria, every win is important.
Every win is further justification that Sutton made the right call to open a racing stable at a time when it’s never been harder for one to succeed.
The truth is, every win makes him hungrier for the next.
“There’s even more (pressure) now than what there was,” Sutton said.
“You don’t want to be seen as a one trick pony and just do it once so I probably add that pressure onto myself. I think that’s what people on the outside want to see as well, whether you can back it up.”
“We have been fortunate that we’ve got that natural support when you win a Group 1 and we’ve been lucky to be supported with horses by some bigger players in the industry.”
“Obviously that comes with a bit more pressure as well because you’re dealing with high quality stock, bigger pedigrees and greater expectations. We’ve only been in the game for a short period of time so every winner counts at the moment.”
“I get just as big a thrill out of a horse winning at Wodonga on a Tuesday as I do with a horse winning in town, but you enjoy a win for a day or two and then you have to move on pretty quickly to look for the next one.”
Feroce will again lead Sutton’s spring charge and he’s optimistic the four-year-old can add to his Group 1 tally.
After an eye-catching return over 1100m last month, Feroce rises to a more suitable 1400m in Saturday’s Group 1 Sir Rupert Clarke Stakes at Caulfield.
The Toorak Handicap and the $10 million Golden Eagle are also on his radar.
“We were in two minds whether to run him first-up over 1100m or give him a third trial,” he said.
“We just felt he was going to take more benefit from having a race start after having a race start after having quite a lengthy spell.”
“We ran him over 1100m knowing it was going to be way too short to him but I think he ran the second quickest last 200m of the race and we thought he was pretty good considering he was carrying top weight against out and out sprinters.”
“He’s come on in the coat and he’s tightened up. We wanted to keep a bit of petrol in the tank for third and fourth-up when he hits the mile so he’s not 100% screwed down yet but he’s nearly there.”
“He’ll go for the Toorak and the Golden Eagle.”
Whilst the winners have been important, so too have been finding the right balance and fine-tuning his processes within his stable and growing staff.
Recently, Sutton closed his Ballarat base in order to focus solely on his team at Flemington. The two-venue model wasn’t conducive to his hands-on approach.
“We’ve got 30 in work at the moment,” he said.
“We did get up to 50 at one stage but that was a bit of a stretch for us so we’ve just cut back to what we think is a more manageable number. When we had the little bit of success early doors, we had a wave of people sending us horses and most of them were cast offs from other trainers.”
“We managed to get results with a few of them but some of the simply weren’t good enough and they were horses that probably didn’t warrant being raced in Victoria. That’s the way that we want to be with our owners, we don’t want to drag things out longer than they need to be and we don’t want our owners to feel disgruntled with a horse that isn’t paying its way.”
“We made a conscious decision to focus on quality over quantity and for that, one of the stables had to go, so we stuck with Flemington and we’re solely there now. I’m a very hands-on type of trainer and so is my partner Raquel and that’s the way that we want to be.”
Sutton hopes several of his emerging three-year-olds might be able to join Feroce in Stakes races in the coming weeks.
A filly by boom young sire The Autumn Sun, After Sun, will tackle Sunday’s VRC Oaks Preview and could be in line for a tilt at some black-type races, while the Caulfield Guineas-nominated Sulek kicks off his career at Mornington on Thursday.
“We’ve got a nice bunch of three-year-olds,” he said.
“We’ve got a filly called After Summer who is still a maiden but she’s building and, while she’s probably going to be more of an autumn horse we’re going to run her in the Oaks Preview on Sunday. A VRC Oaks might be a step too far at this stage but she’s a filly that could be aimed at an Australasian Oaks in Adelaide next year.”
“We’ve got another nice young horse who debuts on Thursday at Mornington called Sulek. He is by Super Seth and bred on the same cross as Feroce and again, I think he’ll probably be better in the autumn, but we’ll see if he can do something this preparation.”
“He’s a nice horse in the making.”
