Bastia provides some solace for Kris Lees

Saturday 26 May 2018, 2:43pm

Bastia has provided trainer Kris Lees with some consolation after promising colt Graff was a late scratching from the Group Two Sires' Produce Stakes at Doomben.

The four-year-old gelding notched the fourth win of his 17-race career when surging to a 2-1/4 length victory as the $3.50 favourite for the EML Handicap (1600m) at Randwick.

Minutes earlier Graff was ruled out of the Sires' Produce Stakes when he became fractious in the barriers.

"Obviously there's mixed emotions with what happened in Queensland but it's good to get a result," said Lees' stable representative Lucas Miller.

"Brenton (Avdulla) rode the race to suit him, the track conditions really suited him as well and he let down accordingly."

Central Witness ($21) was second and Vaucluse Bay ($4.60) was a short head third.

Miller said Bastia would stick to Sydney over winter where wet tracks will be beneficial.

"He's just a consistent Saturday type horose so we'll keep chasing prize money," he said.

Avdulla, who earlier rode The Autumn Sun to victory ahead of the colt's trip to the Group One JJ Atkins at Doomben, protected his Sydney jockeys' premiership lead with an early double.

"He travelled comfortable, I dropped back to the fence at the 600 and my bloke really towed me through and off that gallop he really extended nicely," he said.

– AAP

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »