Strawberry Boy maintained his perfect record for champion trainer Peter Moody with victory in the $80,000 The Chase Hotel Handicap at Caulfield.

 

Strawberry Boy maintained his perfect record for champion trainer Peter Moody with victory in the $80,000 The Chase Hotel Handicap at Caulfield.

The monstrous gelding, who is in his first campaign with Moody after previously being prepared by Gai Waterhouse, backed up a Flemington 1400-metre success with an all-the-way win in today’s 1600m event.

The four-year-old scrambled home by a head, which was closer than those who crunched him to start the shortest-priced favourite of the day at $1.70 might have liked, but jockey Daniel Stackhouse maintained it was a good effort.

“He just wanted to go a little bit hard in the middle stages, but he got there in the end anyway,” Stackhouse said of the Redoute’s Choice gelding, who has now won six of his nine starts.

“He just needs to switch off in the run. Maybe if we try riding him a little bit colder in behind something so he can turn off (it would help), but today he just pinged the barriers and wanted to charge so I didn’t want to fight him.

“He’s a tough horse. To his credit, he’s had two hard runs and he stuck on well.”

Strawberry Boy got the money, but there some eye-catching runs behind him, none more so than Mick Price’s two imports.

Irish-bred, Italian-sourced import Bit Of Hell flashed home for second, while German recruit Pakal did not have a lot of room in the straight but still snuck along the rail to finish fifth, just 1.6 lengths from the winner.

Splitting them was the winner’s stablemate Oregon Spirit (third) and The New Boy (fourth).

Strawberry Boy’s win was the second leg of an on-pace winning double for Melbourne’s No 1 trainer, who earlier scored with Mr Make Believe.

Also favourite, the $4.40 chance, who was ridden by Moody’s apprentice Jake Duffy, resumed at 1000m for the first time and proved too speedy for the unlucky Zedi Knight and Corvidae.

Moody shared the day’s training honours with Darren Weir, who teamed with Ben Melham to win the $80,000 Catanach’s Jewellers Handicap (2380m) with Shiny Buttons before Damian Lane guided Royal Bender ($31 to $19) to victory in the $80,000 Responsible Gambling Awareness Week Handicap (1200m).