Mevius scored his sixth career, and synthetic track, victory at Ballarat, storming home under a perfectly timed Jaylah Kennedy ride in race 6, the 2100 metre Benchmark 58.
The gelding was dead last for much of the journey, as the leaders set a strong tempo up front.
But when the field slowed right down just before the final bend, Jaylah sprung into action, circling her rivals, and getting Mevius up to fourth as they straightened.
Favourite Easy Road ($2.80) and Jarrod Fry refused to lie down as the pair set off the fight out the finish, but Mevius got the upper hand over the final 100m, running out a three-quarter length winner with the ears pricked.
The win sees the son of Japanese stallion Real Impact take his prizemoney to six digits ($111,790), a far cry from the $20,000 Thomas and Monique paid for him as a yearling in 2019.
His first two runs of the campaign at Geelong yielded no joy, but Thomas said the idea was always to have Mevius fit and firing for the start of the synthetic programme.
With that plan well and truly vindicated, he is now hoping to see the six-year-old show his absolute best over the next few months.
"We've given him the prep to lead into this (synthetic) season, hopefully he's a more mature horse this time in," he told racing.com.
"Brent Zerafa pointed out before his first run, he does take a couple of runs to warm up… the runs were ok. But he just doesn't get as much traction on the grass as he does on this surface, and that showed today."
Thomas thanked Jaylah for her near-faultless steer, which saw her and Mevius take out the opening staying contest of the synthetic season for the second consecutive year.
"Jaylah gave him a super ride, she's a gun rider at the moment and really doing well… I'm delighted the team's been able to win this race two years in a row," he said.
"We always wanted to finish strongly… Jamie (Mott) rode him the last start of last preparation and said he just needs to be ridden colder. So, we had that in mind with the weight on our back today, and he finished really well and we're looking forward to a good campaign."
Jaylah thought that Mevius might be left for dead out the back early, but her confidence grew massively when she felt the tempo slacken at the 1000m mark.
"There was a really good speed on early, and I couldn't keep up to tell you the truth, so I just had to go back. But I wasn't happy with the tempo from about the 1000m, so at the half-mile I was ready to pop out and roll into as quickly as I could, and he picked them up at that quickly."
"I've had a couple of sits on him, so I know what's there and he's very honest… I knew he'd be fit enough to run to the line, and that he was."