Champion Western Australia jockey William Pike added the time-honoured Gold Nugget to his trophy cabinet aboard a horse which also hails from his home state.
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In a small but quality field of four, Pike was able to secure a comfortable victory in the $50,000 feature at the Ballarat Turf Club.
Coming Around ($1.70 favourite) settled second over the 1600m trip and then cruised to the lead approaching the home turn and held off Barry The Baptist by three-quarters of a length on the line.
The success was Coming Around's second in Victoria since arriving at trainer Brent Stanley's stables.
Stanley said there were plenty of good races in store for the son of Gingerbread Man, which won five times in Western Australia before his trip east.
"We will see how he pulls up and probably earmark a lot of those country cup races coming up and also some good races just below the groups ones," Stanley said.
Coming Around was backing up from an unplaced run behind Humidor in the group 2 Feehan Stakes, 1600m, at Moonee Valley and his triumph has taken his record to seven wins from 18 career runs for more than $330,000 in prizemoney.
Jordan Childs landed a winning treble on locally-trained horses Can't Take A Trick and Miss Hellbender for Archie Alexander and Shadow Prey for Simon Morrish.
