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Saturday night’s meeting reminded me of the two ends of the spectrum as regards to the racing careers of our greyhounds.
Having seen two debutants win their respective races, I then had the privilege to present Lagile Soviet with his special trophy for having had 200 competitive races at the track.
While we probably have in the region of three dozen dogs in a year receiving awards for 100 races, which is a feat in itself, this was, to my knowledge, only the fourth such presentation for a double century in the last five years.
The Ian Stevens-trained dog has won 40 of his races with a further 54 second places.
A high strike rate in the result frame, so let’s hope that there are still more wins to come from "Boris" before he calls it a day.
The two aforementioned debutants were Ballygibba Sue and Ballyhoe Fifty, who look two nice prospects.
Sue joined trainer Arun Green’s kennels having had race experience at both Limerick and Thurles in Ireland.
Take note that she had 18 races at those tracks and managed only two wins. They were the only two occasions that she ran out of trap three.
It was trap three again here on Saturday evening, so maybe you should keep that stat in mind when she races.
Her record shows that she has early pace away from traps, which is a must-have here.
Ballyhoe Fifty is more lightly raced, having had two runs at Kilkenny and three at Waterford. While he had mixed fortunes, interestingly, twice his starting price was odds-on in Ireland and certainly the 5-2 price at which he won here at the weekend shows a good degree of respect from the local bookmakers.
I think he may find it difficult to repeat the win in his A3 race next time but given time, he may well prove to be a decent grader.
n THE September Dog and Bitch Of The Month awards went to Best Selection and Mountcashel Tuka. Both dogs won four consecutive races to land the prestigious trophies and their form may well continue this month.