TONY GOLLAN - TEN PREMIERSHIPS DOWN, BUT HUNGRY FOR MORE. THERE'LL BE NO RESTING ON LAURELS HERE

By Graham Potter | Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Ten successive Metropolitan Premierships!

Where has the time gone since Tony Gollan made the move from Toowoomba to Brisbane?

Certainly, Gollan has never taken a backward step since his arrival in town and his on-going total dominance of the training scene in Brisbane underlines his unwavering focus on striving for success and his aim of improving on that success level year upon year.

The 2022/23 season’s return of 140.5 metropolitan winners was Gollan’s best return yet, but there is no resting on laurels here.

“I feel that my best as a trainer is well and truly ahead of me. There is a lot I can do better. I feel I am in a very fortunate stage of my life and there is a lot I am looking forward to in the future.

“We are thrilled with where we at … but we certainly think there is a lot more we can do and accomplish. We are only scratching the surface.

“We have a lot of good people who support the stable as owners and we have a lot of good people who work within our stable and we are all committed to achieving more.”
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“It feels like yesterday when I moved down here eleven seasons ago. I definitely wanted to get to Brisbane. We got down here with a small, but strong team and we’ve been able to kick some nice goals since then.

“We had a great season winners-wise. We ticked one important box off the bucket list, which was winning the Magic Millions. That was the highlight of the season.

“I’m not big on strike-rates because we often have multiple horses in races … but we have a great winners-to-runners ratio this year and we’ve trained more winners than we ever have in a season off the same volume of boxes as before.

“I think everybody involved in our team, right from the pre-trainers to the fresheners and all of our stable staff have done a really good job in helping produce maximum output for the number of boxes we have … which is ninety boxes here at Eagle Farm.

“We’ve worked hard, but we’ve been fortunate as well. We’ve had a lot of luck go our way and there really are so many people to thank for the part they have played in what we have achieved as a stable.

“I’m really proud of the job everybody involved with us has done.
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“On the horse front, we’ve had a bit of a changing of the guard in the stable with a couple of the older horses finishing their life in racing while we have unearthed a couple of nice new horses, which is another positive for the season.

“As I said, while overall it has been a good season, there are aspects of it that we can improve upon which we will look to do in the new season.

“I always look at everything at the end of the season … which includes the negatives. The negative here is not winning a Group 1. I’m also sure we have some owners who are very happy and some owners we can do better for … so there are a lot more things we can achieve next season and we will all be working hard to make that happen so that we can build on what has already been an amazing journey."
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SOME NOTABLE GOLLAN STABLE STATISTICS:

*Over his ten-year Premiership rule from the 2013/14 to the 2022/23 season, Tony Gollan has trained 915 metropolitan winners. He had saddled 28 metropolitan winners before his first premiership winning season so, all being well, he will reach that 1000 metropolitan landmark winner total in the new season.

*While he might not be strong on strike-rates for the reasons given, Gollan’s 19.9 percent Metropolitan winning strike rate was easily the best recorded by any local trainer and his stables $11.4 million prize-money haul was 42 percent increase on the previous season.

*Gollan was not only a runaway winner of the Brisbane Metropolitan Trainer’s Championship, but he also landed the Queensland State Trainer’s Premiership in a similar fashion, recording 192.5 wins.

*Gollan’s stable apprentice Angela Jones gave her opposition a galloping lesson in the Brisbane Apprentice Jockey’s Premiership, winning that title by a massive 49.5 wins. Her total of 79 winners for the season would have won all of the four previous open Brisbane Jockey’s Premierships.

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