A Winning Catch
You can get all sorts of “firsts” for people and the greyhounds in racing, and many of them are captured on this page. On Tuesday we had another first for a young handler when she “caught” her first race winner.
This came to fruition in the Pets Tucker Open Maiden Stake over 400m. Illium Bale out of box 1 quickly led from Velasuru (6) and the reserve runner Flying Knocka from box 7. However Velasuru crossed to the rails and opened up a 3 length break on Illium Bale as they ran down the back straight.
Illium Bale and Flying Knocka were racing together and both started to make up ground on Velasuru. Around the home turn, Illium Bale stuck closely to the rails and was able to take full advantage to get through and take the lead, winning by ¾ of a length in the time of 23.36 secs.
Velasuru was not far away in second placing for John Hancock of Nuriootpa, while Flying Knocka was third for Bob Isaacson of Lewiston.
Illium Bale is trained at Murray Bridge by Lisa Rasmussen for the powerful Paul Wheeler kennel in NSW. Lisa and husband Tony have a large racing operation with some 45 greyhounds in work which requires a lot of help, and at the track today that was amply put on display. Lisa’s daughter Tara, while on a holiday break, was at the track to assist, along with regular helper Doug Holmes. Tara helps out at the trials and around the kennels as well, and was pleased at today’s experience, adding that she thought her first catching win was a “bit of fun”. While she doesn’t have an ambition to follow her parents into training greyhounds, she said she would like to be a vet. Tara loves the dogs and has a good relationship with them, so there is plenty of experience to be gained around the kennel to follow in that field. Doug on the other hand became involved with greyhounds in 2006 when working at the same workplace as Lisa. After owning a few greyhounds, Doug started helping out and is now an integral part of the kennel team. There are other helpers in the picture as well and it takes a good team effort to produce the number of winners that they achieve each year.
No trainer took out multiple honours this week, but Tony Rasmussen kept it in the family by winning the distance race on the program with Looks Like Dad.
There is greyhound racing at the Gawler circuit every Tuesday afternoon and a Friday afternoon meeting on the 18th, all leading up to the major race of the year, The Bunyip Gawler Gold Cup, run on Sunday 3rd November.