Des has great day out! (Gawler)
The racing program at Gawler greyhounds on Tuesday was brought to an early conclusion when sudden heavy rain flooded the inside of the track, making racing unsafe.
Prior to that, it was racing was as usual. In race 3, the Gawler Farm Machinery Stake over 400m, the fancied Amzalicious jumped well from box 2 to clearly lead from Nila Allen (5) and Larrikin Streak (7). Down the back straight Cool And Black (1) left the rails and although some 5 lengths off the leading Amzalicious, started to quickly make up ground and looked a threat.
That proved to be the case as Cool And Black ran strongly to the finishing line to run down Amzalicious by 2 lengths in the time of 23.04 secs. Amzalicious put in a solid run to run second for Tony Rasmussen of Murray Bridge, while Kitty Blue ran characteristically very wide on the home turn to just grab third for Karen Wittholz of Lewiston.
Cool And Black is trained by Des Hockley at Lewiston for his partner Renata Maruszczyk. The litter had been bred by Mike Coad from Des’s former racing bitch Bourne Cool, with Des then taking some of the pups to train. Although this was only “Blackie’s” second win, she has run a string of placings, with nearly all runs being at Gawler. Des has had success with other members of the litter, including Better Call Saul, which had won the previous night at Angle Park. After the race Des said that he didn’t have high hopes for Blackie today as she is a wide runner but had the inside box.
Des had enough confidence from the performance of this litter to breed from Bourne Cool again, and has another litter of 9 that are now 3 months old. Des has a lot of experience behind him having been in the sport some 50 years, starting at Broken Hill. Success over the years, regarding it as “a bit of fun” and having plenty of help from Renata, Mick Delorenzo and “Johnno” Johnstone, has kept Des involved.
Cool And Black proved to be not the only of Des’s winners, as he was successful with Cool Mini and Prince Mata later in the day. Alberton based trainer Bill Wudarczyk has only a small team but the two littermates he brought to the track, Springvale Cosmo and Galaxy Snow, were both successful.
Racing is on every Tuesday afternoon but the Friday and Sunday meeting are having a break due to the Easter weekend.