Not the usual Suspect

News that last week’s Group 1 Hollywood Turf Cup (2400m) winner Unusual Suspect is heading to Australia should have made more news that it did. I can’t find a reference to it in the mainstream media.

Unusual Suspect’s trainer and part-owner Barry Abrams offered somewhat of a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid moment when he was asked “what’s next” for the six-year-old.

“Australia,” Abrams said, citing that Australia was a place that would embrace his stayer, who has nine wins from 55 starts, as a racehorse and as a stallion prospect.

“He deserves to be a stallion, but in this country distance horses are not popular stallions,” he said. Abrams will give Unusual Suspect time to overcome his Hollywood Park win, planning to send him to Australia “in a couple of months”.

“My thinking, if I send him to Australia, I can race him there for a year and then retire him to stud,” he said, naming the 2011 Melbourne Cup as an aim.

The Hollywood Turf Cup win broke a run of 16 outs for Unusual Suspect, although he finished a sound second in the California Cup Classic on Hollywood Park’s cushion track late in October. It was his first win since the Cougar II Handicap at Del Mar on August 5, 2009.

Abrams must have been caught up in a bit of international Melbourne Cup euphoria following Americain’s win in the Melbourne Cup on November 2, because he has his wires crossed if he thinks Australia is Mecca for staying stallions, especially those from North America.

We might run the Melbourne Cup, the world’s premier 3200-metre handicap worth $6 million, but Australia is a place for speed, old mate.

Maybe a racing stint is worth a try, but as a stallion, Unusual Suspect is better off with the usual suspects in New Zealand, where his staying prowess will be recognised and appreciated a lot more than it will be in Australia.

Only a few years back, Victorian breeder Walter Altieri imported the Group 1 Keeneland Turf Mile (1600m) winner Nothing To Lose, a son of Sky Classic, to stand at his Newlands Stud, Seymour. Nothing To Lose didn’t attract a single mare before Altieri put him back into work in 2006. Unfortunately the horse broke down after winning a trial for trainer Mick Price at Cranbourne. He now stands Willowbend Park, Queensland, where he has covered around 50 mares a season at a fee of $7700.

It might be a different story if Unusual Suspect can win a decent race here at 2000m, or shorter, but a Melbourne Cup win won’t ensure him a prime place on an Australian stud roster.

We do have some great staying horses standing in Australia. Champions gallopers such as Bernardini, Duke Of Marmalade, Street Cry, Dylan Thomas, Authorize and High Chaparral are just a few, but these are horses of the highest quality and a stretch better than Californian form.

There is another reason why Abrams might think his horse will have some appeal in this part of the world – pedigree. Unusual Suspect is a brown son of the little known Unusual Heat, a son of the great Nureyev, but his dam, Penpont (NZ), is something we know. She was foaled in New Zealand in 1994 and is by the good stallion Crested Wave (USA) from Imposing Star, by Imposing (by Todman).

Imposing Star is from the Sobig mare Black Willow, winner of the Group 1 Manawatu Sires’ Produce Stakes, the dam of George Hanlon’s former good racemare English Charm.

By the way, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid didn’t make it to Australia despite Cassidy’s urgings that it was a place bountiful in gold and other riches – the two bank robbers were killed in Bolivia.