A rare Saturday day meeting at Moonee Valley with a typical off-season card. Some nice horses getting about, but no top liners among the acceptors. Feature race for the day was the Alliance Broking Services Gold Carat, a 1200m race for 3yo with a $150,000 purse.

YOUNG NICOLA and RUNSATI

It was a thrilling day for trainers Chris Calthorpe and Bryan Maher, who both recorded their first city winners. Calthorpe had Young Nicola (Damian Lane) salute in the Ranvet Handicap (1500m), while Maher was successful with Runsati (Linda Meech) in the Jeep Handicap over 1000m.

Congratulations to both Chris and Bryan, hopefully these are the first of many City winners.

ROCKY BOOMBOA

Damien Oliver again proved what a top notch jockey he is piloting the Henry Dwyer trained Rocky Boomboa to a win the the 3yo feature. Instead of settling for being caught wide mid-race, Oliver sent his mount to the front and eased the pace. Meanwhile Mark Zahra on short priced favourite, Love Days, elected to settle three wide with no cover. Oliver sent his mount clear upon straightening and Love Days was unable to run him down, coming up three quarters of a length short. In a race of contrasting tactics, Oliver proved the master once again.

Dwyer said “Fortunately Damien summed it up pretty fast and hooked around them to put him in the pole position. Then they had to do all the work to get around him and they couldn’t quite do it.”

“He’s very tough and everything panned out right, for him at least, the way it went”

“He’s done everything so well and been push button” Dwyer said.

“He travels, relaxes so well and sprints when he has to and does everything right. We’ll keep chasing the VOBIS money and he’s still untapped”.