HAVING quickly established itself as a home for young trainers, the Ballarat Turf Club has secured yet another rising star with Dominic Sutton the latest addition to the training facility.
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Sutton, who hails from the United Kingdom, but has been in Australia for the past nine years, has decided to branch out with his own team as he looks to make his own mark on Australian racing.
And it didn't take him long picking up a win with his just his second starter in a race, when Feroce won a two-year-old maiden at Pakenham on March 21.
But while Pakenham has provided Sutton his start, it's Ballarat where he is determined to make home.
"We've just come down, move day was Easter Sunday, it was a long day," he told The Courier this week.
"We had a couple of runners at Flemington on the Saturday, we moved up seven horses from the get-go, they were the seven horses we have up and going at the moment and we timed it so we've got another three coming in at the end of the week and we'll be drip feeding in the rest as we get more settled.
"We've got about 20 on the books, just slowly growing, plenty of young horses that are just getting educated and will slowly move through the system."
Sutton said when training boxes at Ballarat became available he had no hesitation in making the move.
"We were down at Pakenham which is a great facility, but the way that Pakenham operates is different to other race clubs in the sense that the club doesn't own the stables, it's all privately owned where the stables are located," he said.
"I was in a shared barn with a couple of other trainers and I only had the nine boxes, that's pretty much as big as I could have got there.
"But we want to be able to grow past the numbers we have now, so we started exploring and looking what was available so we wanted something that was a bigger barn, more opportunity to grow the business.
"I spoke with Belinda (Ballarat Turf Club chief executive Belinda Glass) and they've done me a fantastic deal, I've now got a barn of 32 boxes which we can slowly fill up and grow as we go.
"I've heard a lot about the facility and the area, I know Archie Alexander fairly well from the racing circuit, I know Tony and Calvin (McEvoy) well from their Flemington days, you've also got Ciaron Maher here, so you know you've got big trainers here who get big results. It's a great training facility, anyone can train horses here, the facility on its own made it an easy decision."
Having lived in Australia for the past nine years and working with the Corstens family for the majority of that time, Sutton said he knew the time was right to branch out.
"I came over here at 19 just trying to gain some experience, fell in love with the country and decided it's where I wanted to be," he said.
"I've spent the past nine years here working as an assistant trainer and gaining as much experience and building as many contacts as I could, but I've decided this is the right time to take the license and see how we go.
"It was probably about 12 months ago, I did a trip abroad with a horse around the UK and Dubai, so it's always been in the back of my mind about what would be the right time.
"I was fortunate to have some backing from a few loyal clients who were happy to help me and sent me some horses straight away to help me get on my feet. My fiance is also involved in the industry as well, so we're doing it together which makes it a lot easier.
"It's good to be able to build from the ground up and while there are a lot of training partnerships these days, we wanted something that was just ours.
"I was working with a family partnership, so there was only ever going to be so far I could go with them, so after seven years with them it was time to move on."
