Cover image courtesy of Sportpix
Whilst Ryan, a veteran of the training ranks, is well used to producing top-flight winners having turned out sires such as Snitzel, Rubick and Trapeze Artist, it was a first Group 1 for 35-year-old Alexiou.
Not that it’s a victory that he’s ever likely to forget, but it was one that was made all the more memorable for the rest of us as Ellsberg (Spill The Beans) was inseparable from Top Ranked (Ire) (Dark Angel {Ire}) in a thrilling photo finish to Saturday’s G1 Metropolitan H. at Randwick.
It was an even more special victory for the trainers too given that Ryan trained Spill The Beans to win three stakes races, culminating in the G2 QTC Cup - and he’s sire Alexiou too was more than familiar with as he was foreman at their Rosehill base at the time of the horse’s racing career.
“It was nice to do it with that horse as well, as obviously we picked him out at the sales and we trained his father Spill The Beans,” Alexiou told TDN AusNZ.
Since Alexiou joined the licence in mid-2021, things have gone well. The pair have churned out a steady stream of winners from their 74 boxes at Rosehill but, as Alexiou admits, elite horses are hard to come by.
Ellsberg, winner of the G1 Epsom H. | Image courtesy of Bronwen Healy
“Between us, we haven’t had too many in the meantime that put their hand up at Group 1 level,” he said.
However, Ellsberg is the perfect advertisement for the training partnership - having brought him up through the ranks, he’s finished outside the top three in only five of his 22 starts.
Starting from the bottom
Whilst Alexiou is still only young, it’s been a long road to his current position - and it wasn’t necessarily the path he’d intended to take either. Embarking on a plumbing apprenticeship upon leaving school, he was drawn to racing after a couple of years via his father’s interest in the sport.
Sterling Alexiou all smiles after his first Group 1 victory with Ellsberg | Image courtesy of Ashlea Brennan
His father, a keen punter, had an association with Gillian Heinrich, so that’s where Alexiou started out.
“I basically started off as a stablehand - before I started at Gillian’s I hadn’t even thrown a headcollar on a horse. So, it was basic, grounding skills and I kept progressing, I knew a bit of form and I went from working on the ground to slotting into a foreman role at Gillian’s.”
Having taken to the practical side of horseracing later in life, Alexiou soon had a good grasp of the basic skills and his natural ambition led him up the ladder.
“I basically started off as a stablehand - before I started at Gillian’s (Heinrich) I hadn’t even thrown a headcollar on a horse.” - Sterling Alexiou
Heinrich had evidently spotted a talented horseman, and before long she was able to offer Alexiou and opportunity that would change the course of his career.
“Gerald (Ryan) used to bring up his carnival horses and stay with Gillian, and Gillian was kind enough to let me take three or four months off and I went down and ran Gerald’s carnival base in Melbourne at Caulfield.”
After a two-week stint getting to grips with a new training operation at Ryan’s Sydney base, Alexiou was packed off to Melbourne, and things couldn’t have gone better.
Gerald Ryan and Sterling Alexiou | Image courtesy of Inglis
“We had a lot of success there and Gerald and I struck up a really good association,” Alexiou recalled.
“I remember going to Cup week at Flemington… I thought: ‘How good is this?’ I think we had Hot Snitzel in the Coolmore, Ironstein won the Queen Elizabeth and Snitzerland just got touched off in the 2-year-old race.
“After that three or four months was up, I went back and did another six to eight months back at Gillian’s.”
But the allure of the big city was too much, and Alexiou was drawn back to Gerald’s Sydney operation - though the move meant starting from the bottom yet again.
Ironstein winning the Queen Elizabeth S. at Flemington in 2011 | Image courtesy of Sportpix
“I just really wanted to get down to Sydney... I thought: ‘If I don’t do it now, I’m going to regret it,’ so I made the decision to come back.
“I came back down to Gerald, and when I started there I went back to being a stablehand again because he had a foreman at that stage. Probably within six or eight months I worked my way up to foreman.”
With Alexiou having got on well with Ryan during his Melbourne stint, he was further assured that he’d found the right mentor when he joined Ryan at the sales for the first time.
“At that stage, I’d been going to the sales and doing some yearling inspections for Gillian, and we (Gerald and I) seemed to strike each other on the same wavelength, we liked the same horses at the sales and we had similar thinking as to training methods too.
“...we (Gerald and I) seemed to strike each other on the same wavelength, we liked the same horses at the sales and we had similar thinking as to training methods too.” - Sterling Alexiou
“We got on really well from the first time we met and haven’t looked back since.”
The partnership begins
With Alexiou moving to Sydney in 2012, it was eight years until he’d find his name on the licence. Whilst he was sure from their working relationship that there could be no better trainer to learn from, Alexiou didn’t want to commit too early, ensuring that he had checked all the boxes first.
“We’d spoken about a possible partnership or setting up a satellite stable, but at that stage I thought I hadn’t learnt enough - not that we ever can, we’re always learning.
“But, because I’d gone from zero to 100 I thought there was still a few things I wanted to tick off; I wanted to make sure that when I did it I was going to do it to the best of my ability, I didn’t want to go in all guns blazing when I wasn’t really ready.”
Sterling Alexiou | Image courtesy of Ashlea Brennan
Having effectively been educated under Ryan’s tutelage, the pair are unsurprisingly on the same page when it comes to training horses. Whilst Alexiou admitted that Saturday’s success is the kind that might spark growth in the stable, he’s firm that they don’t want to expand their system too much just yet, and for good reason.
“I think prizemoney is great in New South Wales. Not to say that we would never look at setting up a satellite stable but we’re quite happy with the numbers we’ve got here, and looking after the owners and clients we have at the moment without getting too big.
“It still gives us a really good chance to stay hands-on without having too many people in between me and Gerald and the horses. Both of us still like to get really close to the horses and having the numbers we do at the moment it allows us both to do that.”
“Both of us still like to get really close to the horses and having the numbers we do at the moment it allows us both to do that.” - Sterling Alexiou
What’s next for Ellsberg?
As for Ellsberg, now three runs into his preparation, the stable are hopeful that there’s more to come this spring, with the 5-year-old entire evidently in the form of his life.
“At this stage we’re still running in the Five Diamond prelude in two weeks. Obviously, after that we’ll have a think about stepping him up to the Five Diamonds over 1800 metres, though he probably still has a bit of a question mark on him at this stage as to whether he’d run 1800 metres.
Ellsberg will now be aimed towards the Five Diamonds | Image courtesy of Sportpix
“It’s something to think about over the next few weeks as it’s a race restricted to 5-year-olds and you only get one crack at it. Given what it’s worth ($2 million), it’s a hard race to say no to.
“If he didn’t happen to go to the Five Diamonds he’d probably find himself in the Cantala at Flemington.”
