Lester's Little Wine
Little Wine is probably a name you haven’t heard of but she has an amusing backstory to her racing career. The 23kg black bitch who will turn three in December, comes from a handy litter which includes the likes of Zinfandel Tori, Coorong Cash and Zinfandel Oompa. Her trainer and owner, Lester Harris who is one of the great stalwarts of greyhound racing in South Australia, shares upon how she ended up in his care.
“I reared her as a pup, and she grew into very little - size wise. Richard (Stasiak) took her home, but later rang me and offered her as a giveaway on the deal of bottle of wine if she wins a race!” - Lester Harris
That deal later came to fruition when she won her maiden at Gawler in 23.54, having just her third start. It was a gritty victory after she showed her usual early pace.
“Mike Wittholz actually got the wine for me. I said to Wittholz that I’ve gotta buy a bottle of wine for winning it’s first race, he said leave it with me. I know nothing about wine! It cost me 20 bucks.”
While her on track performances to date are very respectable, Little Wine is mainly used to help Lester with educating his younger pups.
“We use her to break dogs in! That’s all we were going to use her for because I thought she was too small, but I was trialling her with young ones and Vaughn (Gray) said to me, I think you better name that dog.”
In between helping Lester educate his pups, we do see Little Wine on the track and yesterday she was able to clock her second career victory with an all the way 23.51 effort at Gawler. This took her record to 9 starts for 2 wins, 2 seconds and a third, not bad for a bottle of wine!