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The former training partnership of Ryan Tyrell and Tom Button may have been dissolved last year but it still hopes to remain a formidable team as trainer and owner at Beaudesert on Thursday.
The pair is hopeful of a first-up win with the former Gary Doughty-trained Dashing Gee Gee in the Benchmark 68 Handicap over 1200 metres.
Dashing Gee Gee – a Noel Callow mount – has drawn the rails for his first assignment since finishing third in a 1200 metre Benchmark race at the Gold Coast last November.
Ryan Tyrell, who is in his eighth year of training, was a former track work rider for Sydney trainer Anthony Cummings for nine years before moving to Queensland.
He is confident the barrier will help offset any disadvantage Dashing Gee Gee might have over the 1200 metre trip.
"He'll go close with Noel Callow aboard from barrier one," Tyrell said.
"The only question is the 1200 metre trip as I would have preferred it to be 1000 metres."
Dashing Gee Gee is lucky to be racing after the son of Al Maher was badly injured in two floating accidents when Button and Tyrell trained him early in his career.
"He ran third at Ipswich one day and went berserk on the float home," Tyrell said.
"He trashed the float smashing the partitions so we had to send him to the vets for surgery.
"I left Canungra in my truck to pick him up and when the vet took him he went off again on the vet float.
"He had to have surgery twice after he fractured a pedal bone in the off-hind cannon bone.
"Because he wouldn't travel Tom and I decided to send him to Gary (Doughty) when he came back into work as Gary trains on the track at the Gold Coast and the horse loves the Polytrack."
Despite their training split, Button and Tyrell remain friends and Button, who now trains in Bowen, has shares in three other Tyrell-trained horses.
Button was a former star Central Queensland jockey and five-time winner of the Rockhampton trainers' premiership before beginning his training venture with Tyrell at Fenwick Farm at Canungra in the Gold Coast in October, 2022.
However, the pair split amicably last year when Button relocated to Bowen in North Queensland after taking a team north for the winter carnival.
