Yulong Base delivered Cody Morgan a welcome TAB Highway Handicap win with a commanding performance at Rosehill Gardens on Saturday.
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Jumping third favourite after drifting from a $3.10 favourite on Friday, the gelding surged clear over the final 150m to win by almost two lengths and score his second win for Morgan from four starts.
It was the Tamworth trainers first Highway triumph for, by his count, 12 months, although he has "run plenty of places" in that time.
Only earlier this month Bajan Gold was just beaten by fellow Tamworth trainer Craig Martin's Tavion Prince (he finished third).
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"I've been second and third a few times so it was nice to finally win one yesterday," Morgan said.
He had set the five-year old for the race, and thought going in he was going to be pretty tough to beat, and he was.
"His form up here had been really good. He won over at the Grafton carnival and in seven starts now he's finished in the top three every time," Morgan said.
Brother Luke had also give him the tick after riding him in work on Tuesday.
"I got my brother to gallop one and they galloped together, and he came back in and said to me 'that should win on Saturday'," he said.
"He's a pretty good judge like that."
After jumping away well and settling in second, the five-year old was given a "terrific run in transit" by jockey Andrew Gibbons before getting to leader Fever Tree with around 250m to go and kicking away.
Morgan said the plan was to settle towards the front.
"Pretty much we thought he'd be sort of third/fourth, probably not that close, but being an ex-jockey you sort of do know that once the gates open that you can have one plan and it can definitely change in one heartbeat," he said.
At this stage he will look to go back down with Yulong Base in a couple of weeks for another highway race.
"It would be great if he could win next start," he said.
"The prizemoney's just tremendous with the highways."
Before then he has a couple meetings closer to home, starting with Tamworth on Monday, where he will likely have three runners.
The first race jumps at 1.40pm.
