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Hawkesbury co-trainers Tara and Philippe Vigouroux continued their most successful season with a win by Bully Rock at Muswellbrook on Monday.
The Choisir 3YO broke through at his seventh start, providing the couple with their 15th victory of 2018-19 – two more than they had prepared in the previous three seasons.
Team Vigouroux put blinkers on the gelding, and the move paid off.
"He is a big baby and is a work in progress," Philippe Vigouroux said. "He has been scratched twice at the barriers before.
"We gave him one gallop in blinkers, and that plus going back to country grade did the trick."
Saturday's Gundagai meeting was a day Hawkesbury pair Jacqueline Greentree and Atsu Maeda will never forget.
Greentree clinched her first win as a hobby trainer with Cosmic Deluxe with Maeda aboard.
The 24-year-old Japanese apprentice notched his first double by scoring on another Hawkesbury representative Enigami for Tara and Philippe Vigouroux's Enigami.
Greentree, who has been training for only a few years, put an end to seven minor placings from 63 previous starters by landing the Maiden Plate (1180m) with Cosmic Deluxe.
The Delago Deluxe filly is raced by a syndicate of friends which includes Greentree, her husband Mark and their cousin, the Canberra trainer Garry Kirkup.
"It was a fantastic thrill," a delighted Greentree said.
"The horses are a hobby. Mark and myself run an air-conditioning/refrigeration business, and we bought this filly at the 2017 Scone yearling sale for $18,000.
"There was something about her we liked when she walked into the ring."
Greentree has only two horses in work at Hawkesbury but has done the hard yards, starting out at Newcastle when apprenticed to leading trainer Paul Perry.
"I rode in a couple of trials but a career as a jockey just wasn't for me," she said.
"I subsequently rode work for Crown Lodge at Warwick Farm, and later went to Victoria to work for trainer Graeme Rogerson."
Greentree doesn't mind travelling with her horses, her first visit to Gundagai being the 23rd track she had visited in search of a breakthrough success, going as far afield as Ballarat in Victoria.
Maeda's 4kg claim was invaluable on both his winners, boosting his career tally to five wins.
He has been with Hawkesbury trainer Martin McInerney for three years and rode his first winner in May.
"Atsu is an only child and lives with my wife and myself at Arcadia, and drives himself to the track each morning and to the race meetings," McInerney said.
"I also have show jumpers and he rides them as well after coming home from trackwork in the morning."
McInerney's involvement with show horses led to him securing Maeda to join his stable.
"I export show horses to Japan and Atsu came to me after initially spending 12 months in Brisbane, where he attended a school to learn English.
"He also did a TAFE riding course, but actually began to ride at home when he joined the Japan Racing Association's riding school."
Riding racehorses isn't Maeda's only forte. He was the No 2 trail bike rider in Japan before moving to Australia four years ago.
