LANCELOT DU LAC - THIS COULD BE ONE TO WATCH

By Graham Potter | Friday, December 5, 2025

Lancelot Du Lac produced an eye-catching performance on debut, taking out the opening race on a rare Friday meeting in Sydney marking him as one for the notebook moving forward.

To say that the Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott trained three-year-old has been a work in progress would be an understatement.

Not many runners have eight trials over a twelve month period without seeing any race action, but that was the exact background to Lancelot De Lac coming into this debut outing … but the son of Flying Artie took just seventy-six seconds to repay all of the patience and perseverance shown by the stable and his connections by landing his first win at his first attempt by a comfortable 2.50 length margin over the 1300m trip.

“We probably thought he wanted a little bit further,” said stable representative Neil Paine. “He is a very relaxed horse back in the stable and he will definitely get over further. Today was 1300m … he’ll get 1400m. He’ll get a mile … 2000m.

“He had so many trials because he has just been a duffer at home … very slow maturing. He has taken a long time to come to hand.

“He was quite impressive the final 50m … he really stretched out and hit the line with intent.

“It was a very positive win. It probably helped with the winner going so hard … that gave him a chance to hit the line, but it was a good win.”

Jockey Adam Hyeronimus was impressed win the win.

“Very impressive. He won well,” said Hyeronimus. “I thought the distance was the query coming here today, but I was very impressed with him doing that in his first race start.

“He jumped really well with blinkers on first time … and to chase a big leader like that … I was always sort of confident through the run, but it is not easy for a horse first time out to be carting the rest of the field up, but he was very impressive.

“That obviously goes to Gai and Adrian. They’ve done the right thing by him and it worked out well today.”