Photo; Darren Winningham
Trained by Kelly Schweida, the colt Grafterburners delivered a commanding performance at Eagle Farm Racecourse today, cruising to victory in the QTIS 3-year-old Handicap over 1200 metres.
Ridden by Corey Sutherland, Grafterburners led all the way in dominant fashion—settling straight to the front, carving out the tempo and then kicking clear in the straight to put the race to bed. The win marked his third victory from nine career starts and came with a healthy QTIS bonus of $35,000, which helped in taking total career earnings thus far, to over $600,000.00!
Grafterburners indicated he would return in good order with two recent pleasing trials, but the tactics undertaken by Corey Sutherland caught Schweida by surprise to say the least.
“I thought, shit!. What’s going on here?”
“There are some nice races in the summer series but we just wanted to give him one race and back off because we don’t want him to get too fat on us.”