Last Saturday’s G1 Hollywood Turf Cup winner Unusual Suspect will head to Australia next year and be set for the 2011 Melbourne Cup.  

Californian owner-trainer Barry Abrams will begin searching for an Australian based trainer for Unusual Suspect in the New Year.  He is also on the look-out for a suitable stud to stand the six year-old stallion.

“He’s ready for two-mile races,” Abrams said after his stayer broke through the $1 million mark at Hollywood Park.  “This horse deserves a chance at stud but there’s no market for distance horses like him in North America.”

Abrams trains Unusual Suspect and owns him in partnership with his wife Dyan and his brother David.  “We can race him in Australia next year and then retire him to stud.  The other plus is that he’s out of a good New Zealand mare.”

Unusual Suspect (6h Unusual Heat – Penpont by Crested Wave) had posted stakes wins at Hollywood, Santa Anita Park, Del Mar, Golden Gate Fields and Bay Meadows before the Hollywood Turf Cup.

All up, he has won 9 races and has also been placed in Group company in the San Juan Capistrano Hcp, Cougar II Hcp and Sunset Handicap at 2400m or further.  “Unusual Suspect made me look good,” winning jockey Corey Nakatani said on Saturday.  “When I called on him, he gave me that surge that I thought he would and we were able to get there.”

Unusual Suspect’s dam Penpont was runner-up on debut at Riccarton in February 1998 before being sold off-shore.  She won over 1200m and at stud has foaled seven winners from seven to race headed by Unusual Suspect and G1 Santa Anita Las Virgenes Stakes winner Golden Doc.

All seven are by Nureyev stallion Unusual Heat who stands at Harris Farms in California.  

Penpont comes from a black-type NZ family going back to her second dam Black Willow (Sobig).  She was a G1 winner of the Manawatu Sires’ Produce Stakes and was named Champion Filly on the 1974 NZ 2YO Free Handicap.