IT’S off to pastures new for Sky Bet Ebor winner Mustajeer (Ger Lyons/Colin Keane), who was bought by big-hitting syndicate operator Australian Bloodstock, albeit with David Spratt, in whose colours he triumphed at York, retaining a share.

He is set to join Newcastle, New South Wales trainer Kris Lees where he is expected to go for the Caulfield Cup before attempting to emulate Protectionist (2014) in winning the Melbourne Cup for his new owners.

Mustajeer, fourth to Muntahaa 12 months ago, ran out a fairly comfortable winner of the first £1 million Ebor, holding off Red Galileo (Saeed Bin Suroor/Cieren Fallon) by less than a length, with Desert Skyline (David Elsworth/Gerald Mosse) and Raymond Tusk (Richard Hannon/Jamie Spencer) filling the minor places.

Plans

Ger Lyons wasn’t there to see his stable stalwart run his final race for the yard, but daughter Kerri oversaw operations on the Knavesmire, and confirmed the plans for the six-year-old son of Medicean, adding: “He was trained for this race so the fact he’s pulled it off is brilliant.

“That doesn’t normally happen in racing. We knew he’d run well but you never know in these big handicaps what could happen. Everything just worked perfectly for him. He can get a bit worked up at the start but we managed to keep a lid on him this time.”

Risk

Regarding his purchase, David Spratt was full of praise for new connections, saying: “Fair play to Australian Bloodstock. He’s a six-year-old gelding and he needed to hit the target.

“They deserve all the success they get for taking the risk. We told them everything about the horse so I hope that gave them a little bit of confidence to buy into him, hopefully, we can all be happy and win together.”