A Hot Winner at Gawler
On Tuesday at Gawler greyhounds, visiting trainer Chris Jaensch landed an early winner in the Gawler South Bakery Juvenile over 400m.
Jumping the best, Individualise out of box 5 led from Bursting Flames (2) and Aston East (1). Down the back straight, Individualise kicked away to a 3 length lead over Bursting Flames, and appeared to be going like a winner.
At the back turn, Bursting Flames started making up some ground and looked to be going to give the leader a challenge. On the home turn, Bursting Flames cornered well while Individualise drifted a little wide. When headed, Individualise did not throw in the towel, and only went down by ½ length in an exciting finish, with Bursting Flames winning in the time of 23.08 secs.
Individualise was second for Lisa Rasmussen of Murray Bridge, and Perro Garaje (7) was third for Karen Bearpark of Two Wells. Bursting Flames is trained at Curlwaa, just over the border in NSW, by Chris Jaensch for one of his sons, Michael who lives in Adelaide. As there are no tracks in the vicinity of Curlwaa, to get the greyhounds to the race track involves a co-ordinated family effort. Chris works during the week, so his wife Christine undertakes the 4 hour drive each way to Gawler, meeting Michael at the track. Michael’s role is to box and catch at the track, as Christine does not have that greyhound license.
So what drives the family to undertake such a logistical exercise? While Christine described it as a “long haul”, she has three sons in Adelaide, so she gets to see them on the trip. Chris has been training for about 25 years and the boys all enjoy it, so that is what keeps them going. So with such dedication just to be in a position to compete, it is good to see that they had a winner on the day. Another of their runners, Bursting Luke, which is from the same litter as Bursting Flames, didn’t have the same success on the day, but the pair has shown promise, winning 5 races between them from a handful of starts.
Kim Johnstone was the only trainer to end up with a double on day, with Delinquency scoring a narrow all the way win, and Specify coming from behind to win well.
There will be racing again at Gawler on Tuesday afternoon and on Sunday 16th, which is a twilight meeting.
