The aptly named Casual Friday stormed home to win her fourth race in a row in the Norman Carlyon Handicap at Moonee Valley tonight.

"It's her second Friday win", observed co-trainer Simon Zahra.

"She won New Year's Day on a Friday. I hope all the guys in the pubs have backed the omen bet."

Expertly guided by Chris Symons, the Tale Of The Cat mare extracted herself from a difficult position before the turn to finish strongly in the $100,000 race, named after a former chairman of the Moonee Valley Racing Club.

"It was always going to be a tricky race", Symons said.

"It was a bit daunting at the 600 but ended up in my favour when I got off the fence she just accellerated."

Casual Friday ($6.50) looked anything but casual at the finish, beating former Queenslander Chelle's Alibi ($26.00) by a short head with stablemate Red Flair ($5.00) fading into third place, 1¼ lengths away, after leading for much of the race.

"On paper it looked like this was what was going to happen", Zahra said.

"You take any win but Red Flair had to do a bit too much work early"

Casual Friday has now won 4 of her 7 starts and over $120,000 in prizemoney.

"We've always had an opinion of her and being from New Zealand we just took our time."

"She had a really good prep her first prep and then we just put her away."

"She just keeps improving and improving and she's improved more than what we really thought she was."

Symons, who has had a lot to do with Casual Friday, riding her in work and all but one of her race starts, expects that she will be suited to distances longer than tonight's 1500m.

"She'll probably be better over a mile", he said.

Zahra and his co-trainer Mathew Ellerton will undoubtedly be looking for a black type race over a little more ground in the near future.

Photos: Quentin Lang