Premier trainer Tony Gollan continued to dominate the summer carnival feature races when Le Palmier won the $125,000 Winning Rupert Plate at Doomben.
Le Palmier ($7) bounded straight to the lead and was never headed, carving the 1200m out in a slick 1.9.21.
Gollan, who won the Winning Rupert with Zoustyle last year, has now won 29 Queensland summer features in the past decade.
Le Palmier is now headed to the Listed Gold Edition Plate at Eagle Farm in a fortnight but Gollan refused to commit the gelding to a start in the $2 million Magic Millions Guineas at the Gold Coast on January 11.
“I will take it two weeks at a time. I really don’t know if this horse would run a strong 1400m in the Guineas,” Gollan said.
“But I like this horse and I suppose the Guineas is worth $2 million.”
Gollan said he felt Le Palmier had been very unlucky when he was slow to jump at the Sunshine Coast at his previous start.
“I felt if he jumped today he would be very hard to beat and that us how it turned out.”
Matt McGillivray continued his good run of feature winners aboard Le Palmier.
“Le Palmier jumped today and he was a able to dictate in front,” said McGillivray who has ridden 13 feature race winners in 2019.