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By Ray Hickson

Hugo Palmer says he’s only ever brought a horse to Australia when he’s had one he believed was a winning chance.

And so it is when Seagulls Eleven, a $51 chance with TAB, becomes the Newmarket trainer’s first runner in Sydney in Saturday’s $10 million Golden Eagle (1500m) at Royal Randwick.

Seagulls Eleven's trainer Hugo Palmer (Pic: Edward Whitaker, Racing Post).

But Sydney isn’t a place that’s foreign to Palmer, back in 2011 he spent more than a year working for Gai Waterhouse prior to returning home and becoming a trainer.

Group 1 placed as a two-year-old, Seagulls Eleven has had an interesting past 12 months and the 44-year-old trainer said if he can produce his best he has a horse that will surprise many.

“We had to feel we had a chance of being in the money,’’ Palmer said.

“He’s rated the same as Lake Forest was when he came down last year, so we’re in the ball park of where we needed to be to win last year’s race.

“We’ve come to Australia every time we’ve had the horse to bring us. It’s a place I love and was very happy for the year or so I lived there."

Eight years ago Palmer raced Wall Of Fire and Mask Of Time in the Melbourne spring with the former runner-up in a Herbert Power before being unplaced in the Melbourne Cup and the latter fourth in the Toorak Handicap.

He said Seagulls Eleven appears to have thrived in quarantine at Canterbury which wasn’t quite the experience the other horses had at Werribee in 2017.

“The guys with him have done a fantastic job, it’s his second trip,’’ he said.

“We took him to California for the Breeders’ Cup last year so it’s not totally out of the blue to be put on a plane and flown somewhere else but Sydney is twice as far.

“He barely lost a kilo and has just thrived since he’s been there.”

It was that trip to America where Seagulls Eleven lost all his confidence, but it didn’t become apparent until his failure six months later in the 2000 Guineas in May.

After that race Palmer recommended to the owners, which include members of the Brighton football club, the horse be gelded and then plenty of hours went into getting his confidence back.

“He had a couple of quite tough races, in the National Stakes at the Curragh he basically wore the second horse for the last furlong,’’ he said.

“We would have been a good second that day had it not happened. He was tough about that.

“He was running well in California and one of the Godolphin horses cannoned into the back of him, the jockey that day said he got a bump and it was like the power went out.

“We didn’t see that loss of confidence until the 2000 Guineas when everything was going smoothly then he got slightly short of room for a minute and he spat the dummy out, race over.

“We had to do a lot of work with him at home coming through horses and getting crowded and being relaxed about that.

“It was all about getting him to switch off out of the stalls, travel and finish his races.”

He resurfaced some seven weeks later and Palmer knew he was on the right track when Seagulls Eleven ran a respectable sixth in the Jersey Stakes at Royal Ascot.

At his next start he finished second behind Godolphin galloper Opera Ballo in the Sir Henry Cecil (1600m) at Newmarket and he then won the Group 3 Thoroughbred Stakes (1609m) at Goodwood.

After that win the plan was hatched to contest the Golden Eagle and Palmer elected to run him in the Group 1 City Of York Stakes (1400m), which ironically included Lake Forest.

The horse ran eighth but Palmer said under the circumstances it wasn’t a bad effort to be beaten four lengths.

“York races Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,’’ he said.

“When the draw came out for Saturday we’d just had one day’s racing I thought it was fantastic, we have the inside draw and exactly where we wanted to be.

“And that’s where you wanted to be through Wednesday, Thursday and most of Friday but as we got to the end of Friday that part of the track was just chewed up.

Seagulls Eleven swoops to victory in the @bonhams1793 Thoroughbred Stakes for @hpalmerracing pic.twitter.com/nVfOjLHcQJ

— Goodwood Racecourse (@Goodwood_Races) August 1, 2025

Seagulls Eleven wins at Goodwood (Video: Goodwood Racecourse on X)

“With the benefit of hindsight, York is a very flat and very fast, sharp, track and I think what suits him is a very stiff seven, like an Ascot seven, or an easy mile like Newmarket or Goodwood.

“One of the many things that appealed about the Golden Eagle is the intermediate trip of 1500m is tailor made for him.”

A few jockeys were in Palmer’s mind to ride Seagulls Eleven including a couple of familiar names to Sydney racegoers – Harry Davies, who has ridden him four times, and last year’s winning rider Cieren Fallon.

But when Tom Marquand, a name quite well known in Sydney, didn’t have any major rides at the Breeders’ Cup meeting he jumped at the chance to secure him and it’s quite fitting given Palmer said Marquand provided plenty of encouragement when the Golden Eagle trip was floated.

“I thought with 18 runners in the Golden Eagle and however many in the Victoria Derby the chances of me finding a leading Australian jockey weren't good, I was going to need so much luck,’’ he said.

“I thought it would be easier to find one at home.

“I use Tom a lot in England, I was chatting him about whether we should come and he said the fact it’s at Randwick rather than Rosehill will suit. He said Rosehill was a more speed favouring track so Randwick is to our advantage.”

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