WELLINGTON Jockey Club's decision to elevate prizemoney for its flagship event looks to have paid off with some of the country's leading trainers nominating runners for this Sunday's $100,000 Wellington Boot (1100m).

Black Caviar's trainer Peter Moody has first starters Lien and The Iliad among the entries while Gai Waterhouse has last-start Kembla placegetter Vonetta searching for some valuable earnings ahead of the upcoming The Championships carnival in Sydney.

Warwick Farm trainer Bjorn Baker is also looking at the race with a trio of his juveniles - Sussex Street, Catchtherainbow and Passaparole - with the latter being an impressive winner at Orange recently.

A total of 33 runners were nominated for the feature event, with two-time winning trainer Trevor Sutherland nominating three runners - Battle Of Evermore, Zero Dark Thirty and Lightning Alert, a full brother to last year's winner Power Alert.

"I've deliberately held some of my two-year-olds back this year to target this race with them and I'll probably have the two runners in Battle Of Evermore and Lightning Alert," Wagga-based Sutherland said.

"Battle Of Evermore has been just behind I Am Snippety in some of his runs and I think that form stacks up pretty well among the country two-year-olds.

"We'll see how good the city horses are but I think of the bush horses my two should stack up. I work them together a lot and can't really split them, one day one will win and the next day the other one will win.

"Lightning Alert compares really favourably to Power Alert, in fact he probably shows me a bit more at this stage than Power Alert did at the same age.

"Kody (Nestor) rode him when he won the other day at Wagga and he gave him a good wrap so it's good to get that kind of feedback from such a good jockey."

A dual-code trainer, Sutherland has 50 gallopers and six pacers in work at his Wagga stables and the Wellington carnival will be right in the middle of a busy few days for his staff.

"We've got races here at Wagga on Friday and trots here on Saturday then I'll have runners at Ardlethan on Saturday, Wellington on Sunday and Queanbeyan on Monday," he said.

"It's a bit of travel and you do get a bit of white-line fever from all the driving but I like the Wellington carnival and these days you have to go where you can get winners.

"I'll fill the truck up and have runners in all the big races at Wellington, and with $100,000 on offer for the Boot that's a big incentive.

"It's been a good race for me with Power Alert last year and Sin Sin Sin a few years ago, hopefully I can win it again."