November 2024 – John Symons and Sheila Laxon<\/p>\n
In a month where a Queensland stable won the Melbourne Cup, this nominee is a fairly obvious one.<\/p>\n
The Sunshine Coast-based team of John Symons and Sheila Laxon won the Melbourne Cup with Knight\u2019s Choice as Queensland-based hoop Robbie Dolan did the steering.<\/p>\n
For Laxon, it was her second win in Australia’s greatest handicap race with just her second ever runner.<\/p>\n
She also won with Ethereal in 2001.<\/p>\n
For John, it was his first ever starter in the race that stops the nation.<\/p>\n
Knight\u2019s Choice was certainly a boom horse in Queensland in the early stages of his career after winning the Group 3 Winx Guineas as a three-year-old in dominant fashion.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
October 2024 \u2013 Tony Gollan<\/p>\n
The first of two Tony Gollan nominations for this award, it was star galloper Antino who again put on a show for the premier Brisbane trainer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The reigning Queensland Horse of the Year smashed his rivals in the Group 1 Toorak Handicap at Caulfield.<\/p>\n
The win was fueled by a daring ride from quality hoop Blake Shinn to take over the race in the middle stages and Antino scored by almost seven lengths.<\/p>\n
Prior to the Toorak Handicap, the writing was on the wall for Antino in the three Group race lead-up runs against the best horses.<\/p>\n
The Toorak Handicap triumph was a fitting response after finishing a close second in the race the year prior.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"November 2024 – John Symons and Sheila Laxon In a month where a Queensland stable won the Melbourne…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-176428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}