THE GAMBLING GREEK CLEANS UP IN STYLE

By Graham Potter | Saturday, January 17, 2026

On January 17, a day after The Pool Boy has regained winning form at Ballina, the Tony and Maddysen Sears training partnership was back in the winner’s enclosure … this time at Doomben where The Gambling Greek scored an easy win in a BM68 Handicap over 1200m to become a three-time winner from fourteen starts.

The son of Russian Revolution’s last win had come at the equivalent meeting a year before when taking out a Three-Year-Year-Old Handicap over 1200m at Eagle Farm on January 18. 2025 … so, in theory, you could mark this down as a time of year he enjoys.

The Gambling Greek did give notice that a winning result was in the offing, coming into the race off the back of two third place finishes in which he finished within two lengths of the winner on each occasions.

Here, in a seven-horse field with four runners quoted at $4.60 or less in the betting, The Gambling Greek started second favourite at $3.50 … but the race did not pan out to be as open as the betting predicted it would be.

With Brandon Lerena taking over the reins on The Gambling Greek for the first time, the Sears trained runner jumped straight into the lead and raced a length-and-a-half clear of the second placed outsider Broken Hero ($100) and continued to lead at a comfortable gallop all the way to the home turn.

Lerena then applied more pressure to the opposition by asking The Gambling Greek to extend early in the home straight … and that basically was the race ‘done and dusted’ as The Gambling Greek increased his advantage out front with the minimum of fuss.

Broken Hero fought on in vain but did enough to fill second place 2.69 lengths behind The Gambling Greek.

No other runner fired a shot.

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