Ton up! Tony Carroll 'can finally enjoy Christmas' after he trains 100 Flat winners in a year for the first time

Tony Carroll gave himself the best Christmas present he could wish for as he finally cracked the landmark of training a century of Flat winners in a year for the first time.

The prolific dual-purpose trainer has enjoyed plenty of valuable successes during his career, which spans across four decades. However, he reached his ambition of bringing up 100 victories in 2024 when Second Collection struck in the 5f handicap at Wolverhampton on Monday.

Carroll's previous highest tally on the Flat was 85 winners two years ago and he was thrilled, as well as relieved, to cap his career-best campaign by getting his maiden triple-figure haul.

"It's been a great year and we've had such brilliant support from all of the owners and staff, especially my partner Lisa. I think I'd driven them all mad by wanting to do this," he said. "We've got such a great team and have so many lovely memories to remember from this year.

"It's been special and wonderful. We had a great start to the year and it just continued to roll on to the grass season, but we needed to see it all of the way through and it picked up again in the last three or four weeks."

Carroll had already enjoyed a December to remember as The Craftymaster was crowned the Arc Outstanding All-Weather Horse at the Racehorse Owners Association annual awards.

The Craftymaster: one of the horses who has been a big contributor to Tony Carroll's centuryCredit: Mark Cranham (racingpost.com/photos)

However, the six winners he required to reach the century at the start of the month had been weighing heavy on his mind.

Carroll added: "I can finally enjoy Christmas now as I was getting a bit tetchy – you'd have hated to not see it through having come this far. We'll definitely be celebrating and I'll be throwing a party for everyone as we're a yard who does so much work behind the scenes.

"There's 100 great memories from the year, I can't split them! We've now got a special moment that no one can ever take away from us – it's been absolutely wonderful."

Second Collection's win also brought up jockey Luke Morris's 13th ton in the last 14 years, and Carroll said: "I'm glad we managed to top it off together.

"He's been part of our hard work for many years too, and now I can ease up and celebrate a bit, especially as I've been going a bit mad with runners over the last couple of weeks."

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