Towcester are pulling out all the stops for the track’s Christmas Bonanza on Saturday, December 21, featuring the final of the £10,000 bet365 Puppy Oaks.

A superb programme of races will be followed by the Northamptonshire track showing the Tyson Fury v Oleksandr Usyk rematch for the undisputed world heavyweight title – all of which should ensure a bumper crowd the weekend before the festive period.

The meeting, which includes a host of valuable one-off contests and is being based on Shelbourne’s Night of Stars and Winter Festival meetings, will be live on SIS plus broadcast on Gone To The Dogs – Live! and streamed via YouTube, X and Facebook.

Hosted by Dani Jackson, Gone To The Dogs – Live! has broadcast shows from Yarmouth, Romford and Nottingham – and the card at Towcester could be the best yet with an all-sponsored meeting and over £50K in prize-money set to attract huge interest.

“We’ve got a £10,000 final plus nine individual one-off races over a variety of distances and criteria worth £3,000 to the winner,” said James Chalkley, Towcester’s director of racing, who confirmed the track’s graded strength will not be forgotten.

“We have four kennel sweepstakes competitions and the entries for these will close on Monday, December 9. We’ve asked trainers to treat these like normal open-race competitions and express an interest with greyhounds who meet the criteria.”

Chalkley is delighted with the response to the idea of staging a Night of Stars-type gala night, but understands attracting sponsors was always key.

“Fair play to those who’ve made this work and I have to credit Billy Brennan here who has helped pull the sponsors together. We got to six or seven pretty quickly – which is testament to the support out there – and I understand a few more phone calls from various parties helped us get to nine – so we’re looking at a 14-race card.”

The kennel sweepstakes competitions will start a week before the night of the Christmas Bonanza with the nine £3,000 one-offs closing to entries at noon on Monday, December 16 – and Towcester wants trainers to put the date in their diaries.

Towcester, December 21

Open Races – £3,000 to the winner

PCS Legal Ladies – 500m

racingandsports.co.uk Marathon – 942m

BGBF Greyhound Stud Book British Bred Stakes – 500m

KSS Syndicate Stayers – 712m

Gone To The Dogs Sprint – 270m

BetGoodwin Stakes – 500m

Barry Boothby Memorial Stakes – 500m

TruFrame Futurity Puppy Stakes – 500m

Signet Denver@Stud Seniors Stakes – 500m

Graded Sweepstakes – £750 to the winner

500m – for greyhounds that have contested at least 4 x 500m races at Towcester and not previously gone faster than 29.70sec

270m  – for greyhounds that have contested at least 4 x 270m races at Towcester and not previously gone faster than 16.20sec

500m – for pups (Jan 23 or younger) that have contested at least 2 x 500m races at Towcester and not previously broken 30.00sec

712m – for greyhounds that have contested at least 4 x graded races at Towcester and not previously gone faster than 44.00sec over 712m and not previously contested in A2 or above