Wimbledon will stage nine graded races on Friday and thirteen on Saturday having bumped along on a minimum ‘eight, plus twelve BAGS’, in recent weeks.
Racing manager Gary Matthews said: “Its quite pleasing because there are no opens among them. We will continue to advertise them, but I think we only had three entries for each of them, possibly because of the big meeting at Towcester.
“Things have just started getting better all around. Ray Butler’s pups that we talked about before have now graded and Dave Puddy has brought about a dozen. Terry Atkins is still trialling his in, though it is taking a while.
“We are up to 160 dogs, from a low of around 125 but would go further if we could. Ideally I would like 13 races on a Friday and 14, or even 15 races on a Saturday, though we realise that we are always vulnerable if we lose one of our bigger trainers.”
The cards will also receive a significant natural boost in October with the start of the St. Leger and Puppy Derby.
