Photo Man Chasing Adelaide Cup Glory
The biggest race on the South Australian Greyhound Racing Calendar will take place this Friday night at the Angle Park circuit, with the running of the 2022 Tab Adelaide Cup. Six heats were run last week, all taken out by some fantastic chasers on what was a terrific display of high quality racing. Last year's series was taken out by the Victorian, Do It, who was able to topple the race favourite Aston Rupee. This year's race will follow a similar scenario, with Wow She’s Fast going to start an odds on favourite after taking out the ‘golden ticket’ race, winning the match race series two weeks ago. The second favourite will likely be the South Australian, Mallee Magic trained by Tony Rasmussen, who was brilliant last week, winning his heat in the best of night time. South Australia will also be represented by Top Quality trained by Ben Rawlings, who showed terrific pace to set up a race winning lead in his heat last week, whilst Buzz Junkie trained by Petar Jovanic caused a boilover last week from box eight and will exit the same box again Friday. One of the Victorian’s that will be here to try and claim Group 1 glory is Photo Man, who will start one of the outsiders in the race, despite his imposing career record. He was led early in his heat last week but proved way too classy, winning by four lengths in 30.40, but most definitely will improve this week, particularly his run home time. His trainer, Gavin Clifton was pleased with the heat win last week.
“Ï was actually hoping he begin better,” said Clifton
“He still ran 5.23 even though he missed it a little bit, I think it was made to look worse because a couple of the others began better than I thought they would. I was happy with the run. I probably thought he would run a little quicker, I didn’t go myself, my cousin Dave who I train with said it looked a bit heavy on the inside. Very happy otherwise.”
In the run on Thursday, Photo Man did stay quite wide, despite Clifton bringing him over for a trial the week prior. It was a handslip trial, which Clifton concedes he might have been better putting him out of boxes to adjust to the quiet lure.
“It’s probably a bit of a trait, in the trial I didn’t think he did, I thought he was right behind the lure, but maybe he was feeling it a bit towards the end. He’s generally pretty strong and when I trialled him his run home was terrific according to a few of the locals.”
The plan for Clifton will be to fly over Thursday with his cousin Dave and Photo Man, staying with friends Thursday night before making their way down to Angle Park on Friday night.
“We’re both going to come over. We flew him over to trial because he handles the aeroplane like you wouldn’t believe. He handled the trip well in the car according to Dave. We would have flown last week except we couldn’t get a ticket because of the school holidays.”
“I spoke to Tammy this morning from Jetpets, she’s always terrific and she got us on the flights we wanted on Thursday. We will stay over there with a friend and hopefully he (Photo Man) will relax during the day.”
After the run Thursday night, Photo Man had pulled up well, with Clifton keeping him relatively fresh for the eight day break.
“He’s good, he’s got 8 days to recover from last week. Tuesday morning he had a little run around in the paddock by himself, but we’ll keep him as fresh as we can and hopefully he can begin a little better than he did last week. Now he’s had a practice out of the boxes, let’s see what happens.”
With the box draw completed on the night after the heats, it threw things up with the local Mallee Magic drawing the ace box one, Wow She’s Fast landing in five and Photo Man next door in six, something that Clifton wasn’t thrilled about.
“Oh boy, nah not happy with box six! We’ve only had box six once before, in the Million Dollar Chase semi final, which Wow She’s Fast was in box five. So the only time we’ve beaten Wow She’s Fast is when we were in box six and she was in box five! That’s the one percenter that I’m hanging on too!” quipped Clifton
“We’re pushing up hill with Wow She’s Fast, she’s a superstar, she really is. You’ve also got to be wary of a local off the inside too and there's two of them. As I said today though, we can’t win at home in the kennel. When you’ve got a dog good enough to be in these sort of races then you’ve got to be in them.”
“We’ll go over as confident as we normally are, knowing the big thing that he will try his heart out. He’s the best chaser we’ve ever had, he just tries so hard and gives everything.”
“He’s special to us that’s for sure!”
The box draw is as follows:
- Mallee Magic
- Top Quality
- Fernando Mick
- Zippy Tesla
- Wow She’s Fast
- Photo Man
- Dusty Bourbski
- Buzz Junkie
- Hill Top Jack (Res)
- Zara’s Ivan (Res)
The Adelaide Cup is set to be run at 8:38pm local time.