Sin To Win fights back for Caulfield win

Sin To Win is making enough progress as stayer that Lindsay Park is thinking about a Cups campaign.

That won’t be on the agenda this year after the five-year-old won the Ladbrokes Up For The Challenge Handicap at Caulfield on Wednesday, his first try at 2400m.

But the 2018 Caulfield and Melbourne Cups are the long-range plans for the five-year-old who collected his fifth win from 10 starts.

Senior Lindsay Park trainer David Hayes said the stable deliberately bypassed this year’s spring staying features, preferring to race him through the grades.

But that could change with the Lexus Stakes at Flemington on November 4 and either the Zipping Classic (2400m) or the Sandown Cup (3200m) two weeks later possible short-term targets.

“We’ll see how he pulls up as he’s an immature horse in his first preparation for us but if he does well we might run him in the Lexus on Derby day,” Hayes said.

“He’ll have no weight and it’s not quite the race it used to be as the Melbourne Cup horses don’t run in it.

“He’s not in the Melbourne Cup but if he was and he won the Lexus you might be tempted to run, so we took that temptation away.”

Leading from the outset under Kerrin McEvoy, Sin To Win was headed by the runner-up Lycurgus before fighting back to score by a long neck with Settler’s Stone 1-1/2 lengths away third.