IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN A WHILE COMING, BUT THIS ONE BELONGED TO FARWEST

By Graham Potter | Thursday, April 17, 2025

It had been a while in-between drinks for the Tony and Maddysen Sears trained Farwest.

The son of Heroic Valour won on debut back in May 2023 and he had to wait close to two years to claim his second victory and that came in a BM60 Handicap over 2000m at Toowoomba on April 17.

Fair to say though that Farwest (the $2.60 favourite) was deserving of that reward as, in the fifteen runs he had between his two winning efforts, Farwest finished second on four occasions and third on five occasions … only finishing more than two lengths back twice in all of those nine placed outings meaning he was often right in the thick of the action.

Apprentice Corey Sutherland, whose 3kg claim would play a positive part in the outcome, took Farwest back to last place from the start … and then second last as the field went out of the home straight, racing close to ten lengths off the leader.

You could make that deficit twelve lengths going down the first half of back stretch but, at the 850m mark with Farwest racing four to five wide, Sutherland decided to make a forward move, and, once committed to doing that, he continued to push Farwest out, tracking up strongly, passing runners rapidly on the sweep to the home turn to straighten with only one horse … Bilpa Morea ($14) … in front of him.

Farwest continued to maintain his momentum, going past Bilpa Morea early in the home straight to hit the front, but there was no room to rest and Farwest had to stay strong to the line to ward off the challenges of Lizzy’s Pride ($16) and Medical Autocrat (the $3.30 second favourite) to earn his long awaited win … which he did to score by a margin of a length.