A BEEF WEEK CUP WIN AT CASINO FOR TEAM SEARS

By Graham Potter | Friday, May 30, 2025

Placing horses where they can win is an optimum task of a trainer and Tony and Maddysen Sears carry that task out very well.

The Sears team took two runners to the meeting at Casino on May 30.

They kicked off the day with a winner in the form of The Pool Boy who started second favourite at $3.50 and who saluted by 1.13 lengths over the 1000m trip on debut under Nozi Tomizawa.

Tomizawa had piloted The Pool Boy in two winning trials prior to The Pool Boy’s first taste of race action … on May 13 and May 20 … so the son of Too Darn Hot was well primed for his first run.

More success was to follow for the Sears stable when Secret Plan took out the featured Beef Week Cup under the guidance of apprentice Jett Newman.

Secret Plan was caught three wide in fifth spot in the early part but Newman pushed the seven-year-old son of I Am Invincible forward to join the leader in a packed field on the home turn.

It was always going to be a slog with the track rated a heavy 9 and the pressure was pretty intense with a line of runners spread across the track with 300m left to run.

Inside the least 200m though, it had become a race in two as the two favourites Ocean Alps ($3.30) and Secret Plan ($4) battled for supremacy in the murky conditions.

It was a battle royale and, just when it seemed that Ocean Alps had asserted her authority by claiming a narrow lead with 100m left to run, Ocean Alps shifted out a good three to four horses … and then came back in again, all under hard riding.

All this time Secret Plan had been holding a straight line … that, and the 3kg claim for Newman, effectively made all of the difference.

With Ocean Alps coming back in late, the two runners were very close together going to the line, but it was now Secret Plan who held the advantage and he crossed the line to claim the Beef Week Cup by a 0.17 length margin.

This was Secret Plan’s eighth win overall, but the first since switching to the Tony and Maddysen Sears training partnership. He came into the Beef Week Cup on the back of runs in town at Eagle Farm against the likes of Exotic Miss and Tavs … which rated as winning form in this company, which is how it turned out even with the conditions trying to get in the way.