Ready, aim, Afire at Festival of Fire success!
South Australia’s local participants are set to enjoy a big night at Angle Park on Thursday night with the fourth edition of the Festival of Fire series being held.
Born out of SA’s attempt at a Phoenix bid, the Festival of Fire sees seven feature finals run across all distances from 342m up to 730m and is only open to South Australian participants and greyhounds who have been domiciled locally.
The main event on the card is The Ashes, which is worth $20,000 to the winner for the state’s best sprinters over the 530m distance with past winners including Where’s Poppy and Springvale Roxy.
This year’s race is a wide-open affair, with the scratching of standout Fantastic Spike, who was a 30.30 heat winner last week and had won five of his last six starts, all in open company in SA.
Heat two went to the Ben Rawlings trained Peaky Boo, who showed great improvement at his second up run to win with a slick 30.42 effort while the field also include Gawler Gold Cup winner Pet Detective
Another key chance will be Afire, who has been racing well since returning to South Australia and will be aiming to give trainer Craig Jaensch the biggest win of his career.
Afire, who finished fourth in the Group 1 Harrison Dawson earlier this year, has won three of five since arriving back in SA and Jaensch said it was good fortune which brought him into his kennel.
“Ed Burrett (his owner) asked me to look after one of his other dogs and a couple of days later he said he’s going to put him (Afire) on the transport and asked am I alright to pick him up,” Jaensch said.
“It was a bit of a surprise really. There was no hesitation! He’s definitely the best dog in my kennel.”
Afire ran second in the heat last week in 30.52, just a length behind Peaky Boo and Jaensch was impressed with the run as the greyhound continues to improve back up in open company after winning the masters series at Angle Park on December 5th.
“His form had been good at the masters level, I thought his heat run was pretty good. He got into a bit of trouble early but still motored up, but couldn’t quite run the leader down, but I thought he was pretty tough in running second,” Jaensch said.
“It’s (times getting quicker) probably a combination of fitness and just settling into the place. It is also just more consistency going around Angle Park, he seems to handle that first corner really well,” Jaensch said.
“So just fitness and knowing the track a bit better, I know he’s been there before but the consistency of going around their week in week out, I think that’s made a bit of a difference to him.”
He has drawn box three in the final and despite having never won from the draw previously, Jaensch was confident on Afire’s chances.
“We’ll take box three, but he’s never won out of box three which is a bit of a concern,” Jaensch said.
“If we can get a bit of luck early and get into that first corner up amongst them then I think he’s a bit of a chance.”
As for the chance of claiming the biggest win of his training career, Jaensch said he was just excited to be on the journey with Afire.
“As long as he gets around and comes home safe then I’ll be happy,” Jaensch said.
“It’s an honour to be there really, it’s the biggest race I’ve ever been in.”
“I couldn’t be more thankful to Ed (Burrett) for giving me the opportunity to train the dog, I am pretty lucky really so hopefully we can get the job done for him and I will be happy with that. “