IT MAY not have been the most exciting Grand Annual Steeplechase at Warrnambool yesterday but it will go down as one of the most successful in this new era of sanitised jumps racing.

Australia's longest jumps race — at 5500 metres— was won for the fourth time in 10 years by the combination of trainer John Wheeler and jockey Brett Scott, this time with the nine-year-old Real Tonic coming off his success in the Great Eastern at Oakbank on April 16.

Scott did not ride Real Tonic in the Great Eastern, the mount going to Adam Trinder, who had partnered him in the Von Doussa Steeplechase two days earlier while Scott was in Japan winning the Nakayama Grand Jump on Karasi for the second year in a row.

Scott, 35, said that while the Grand Jump was the richest jumps race in the world, the Grand Annual was something special. "This (the Grand Annual) is more gruelling than the Grand Jump and I regard it as the Melbourne Cup for jumps jockeys," Scott said.

For the first time this year, the Grand Annual was run with the new modular fences that are now standard around Victoria.

Wheeler has been outspoken about the new Racing Victoria jumps policy — not so much about the easier fences, but in giving in to pressure groups who are anti-jumps racing.

"Once you start giving in to these groups, they will want more and they won't be satisfied until jumps racing is banned. They keep picking on us and it really pisses me off," Wheeler said. "I'm all for anything that makes jumps racing safer for horses and jockeys but I love the game and I don't want to see it ruined."

None of the 13 runners fell yesterday although Landslide lost his rider, Steven Pateman, and Mascagni, High Czar, Union Lad, Thunder Line and Shaman's Dream all ran off at various stages. It was left to Real Tonic and Busby Glenn, two of the three equal favourites along with High Czar, to take control of the race about 1600 metres from home and turn it into their own two-horse war.

Scott said he knew he had Busby Glenn's measure about 20 metres before the final jump.

"From the third-last fence, he started to get the 'wanders' but he kept going on ability alone," Scott said. "I think Busby Glenn (a first-season steeplechaser) might be a better horse but he's not as tough (as Real Tonic) and my bloke just outstayed him."

Real Tonic ($4.60) won by 2½ lengths from Busby Glenn ($4.60), ridden by Bill Williams, with the $151 chance Jungle George 15 lengths away third.

Wheeler said the Grand Annual was still the ultimate test of stamina for a jumper but the courage had gone out of it because of the easier jumps.

Wheeler and Scott, who looks after the trainer's Mornington stable, first combined to win the Grand Annual with Foxboy (1997) and followed up with The Sundance Kid (1998) and Frankoo Verymuch last year. Wheeler also won the race as a part-owner with Straight And True in 1993 on his first visit to Warrnambool.

Despite Scott's imposing record, he does not believe he has conquered Warrnambool.

"I still haven't won a Galleywood," he said, referring to the feature hurdle on the middle day in which he fell off High Season, a stablemate of Real Tonic, on Wednesday.

Wheeler said Real Tonic, an injury-plagued galloper, would be kept going for the Grand National Steeplechase at Flemington in July.