It was a race for the long shots, but a blueblood six year-old gelding was the winner with Rustic Steel producing a career best performance to trounce 200-1 shot Sharp Shock and 100-1 shot Imatruestar in the $250,000 Group III Newcastle Stakes (1400m) on Friday.

Trained at the track by Kris Lees, Rustic Steel is no stranger to success having had feature wins in the Listed Scone Cup and notably in the $2million ATC Big Dance in 2022.

The son of Deep Field had not raced since early December, but with two trials under his belt was ready to fire and led his rivals a merry dance.

Well rated by Sam Clipperton, he led for home and kept up a good gallop to win by more than three lengths taking his overall record to nine wins from 23 starts with prizemoney of $1.9million.

“On paper it didn’t look like a fast run race,” Kris Lees said.

“He’s won before winning The Coast (1600m) on speed but when he got across and was able to show a good turn-of-foot at the top of the straight, he was always going to be hard to run down.

“He’s got that residual fitness and ran a couple of nice trials.”

A $500,000 Inglis Easter purchase from the Newgate Farm draft for Tasman Bloodstock, Rustic Steel runs for Ron and Judy Wanless.

Foaled and raised at Newgate, Rustic Steel is the best of four winners from Ten Carat Rock, an unraced sibling to Group I winners Redoute’s Choice, Manhattan Rain and Platinum Scissors.

Ten Carat Rock was bought by Dean Hawthorne Bloodstock for $400,000 from Newgate at the 2018 Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale.
Ten Carat Rock was covered last spring by Capitalist.