Tony Gollan eyes early winter sprints with Casual Choice after tough win in Gold Coast Stakes

IT was hard to tell who was happier in the wake of Saturday’s Gold Coast Stakes as connections of both the winner Casual Choice and runner-up Sir Moments broke into celebration.

Casual Choice beats Sir Moments to win the Gold Coast Stakes Photo: Grant Peters, Trackside Photography

IT was hard to tell who was happier in the wake of Saturday’s Gold Coast Stakes as connections of both the winner Casual Choice and runner-up Sir Moments broke into celebration.

Trainer Tony Gollan immediately earmarked early winter ambitions for Casual Choice, who made it two from two this time in after Michael Cahill took the shortest route home.

“He’s held off a good horse and we can head to those early sprints confident we can do a bit of a job,” Gollan said.

While Gollan was thrilled with Casual Choice giving him back-to-back wins in the race (after Rocket To Glory last year), fellow trainer Steve O’Dea and his owners were looking ahead to bigger things with Sir Moments.

“We couldn’t have asked for a better comeback,” O’Dea said. “It would have been nice to get a bit more room, but we couldn’t be happier with that.”

O’Dea said Sir Moments would go to 1350m next time out, then step up to a mile, before returning to the Gold Coast in a bid to go one better than his second placing in last year’s Hollindale Stakes.

Earlier, trainer John Zielke achieved the rare feat of winning the two-year-old race on three consecutive Saturdays with different horses when Spot The Diff won the rich Summer Plate.

After Happy Event and Royal Tithe won the previous fortnight, Spot The Diff justified a huge betting move to comfortably win the $100,000 event.

The official starting price was $2.30 into $2, but she was odds-on with all corporates by jump time and paid a top tote dividend of just $1.60.

Zielke heaped praise on Luke Dittman, who eased three wide before the turn and had the leaders covered soon after. “He’s a very good rider and that’s why I put him on, whether he can use his claim or not,” Zielke said.

Dittman rates Spot The Diff second in the pecking order of Zielke’s two-year-olds behind Royal Tithe. “I was exposed half a furlong earlier than I wanted to be, but she able to put two lengths on them at the top of the straight and was just too good,” Dittman said. “She’s just a little fighter.”

Just as James Orman did to win the first race on Uno Five, Jeff Lloyd made a winning midrace move to snare the prize on Where’s Thatdragon in race three. “When they slowed up it played right into my hands,” a grinning Lloyd said.

Originally published as Tony Gollan eyes early winter sprints with Casual Choice after tough win in Gold Coast Stakes