A little bit of history was made on Saturday when Zillah became the first winner for 2017 Greyhound of the Year, King Elvis.
Zillah, out of Holly Golightly (Adageo Bob-Santro Cruz) was from one of the first two litters sired by Liz McNair’s runner, born on the same day, 2nd September 2019. Contesting only her second race, an A8 at Hove, the Alma Keppie trained black took a comfortable lead and then held on to clock 30.65 on going rated -20. There were three bitches in the litter with sister Hazel beaten in her only outing to date.
Four members of the other litter born on 2nd September, out of Hurleys Cleo are running at Pelaw Grange but are yet to win. Younger still, five members of a November ’19 litter out of Blackhouse Ash have already raced at Newcastle.
There would be few Elvis litters of more interest than the October ’19 litter out of the ‘Three Steps’/Lowther winner Geelo Sapphire.
Trainer Carl Perry said: “Unfortunately there were only two pups in the litter. They are both huge, the dog was around 84lbs when we sent him over to Youghal to be schooled. The bitch qualified first time in the boxes and the dog was a length outside. I expect we’ll have them back in the next month.
“For the first time ever, I actually had them marked up and all the paperwork done before I sent them over so they should hopefully be on the track quite quickly when they come back.”
The Elvis litter was Sapphire’s second and she has since produced a litter by Magical Bale. The first litter of nine were by Candlelight King and all won races.
Carl said: “They were a bit disappointing to be honest. Some of them had some ability, particularly Geelo Davey (16.01 Sheffield) but they were quite fragile as a litter. They were only June ’18s but several of them have been retired early, including Davey. It was one thing after another and I just wasn’t prepared to keep putting him through it.”
Carl currently has seven pups in the paddocks by Droopys Sydney out of Puppy Derby winner Geelo Blissful plus eight by Droopys Buick out of Geelo Zip.
He said: “Zip’s first litter have just started racing at Sheffield but after this lot I have nothing planned. We had a few bitches miss last year, for some reason a lot of people had the same problem, and I have been holding back a bit on breeding since. A lot of the Irish lads have held back too, there will be a serious shortage of dogs next year.
“But it seems obvious to me that there will be opportunities for British breeding going forward. In my view, if we had someone in England doing the sort of thing that Ian Greaves is doing in Ireland, I think they would be selling their pups as soon as they were born. It would definitely be commercially viable in my view.”
