Before running their ‘Best Three Moments’, in greyhound racing, we asked our columnists to come up with a ‘top 5 worst moments’. As you will see, they can be every bit as emotional and dramatic as their happier times.
GRAHAM HOLLAND Probably the biggest disappointment in a race was the 2008 Irish Cesarewitch at Mullingar. We won both semi finals with Farloe Jester and Hondo Dingle and fancied our chances in the final. Farloe Jester managed to get his muzzle caught in the traps and Hondo Dingle missed his break and found trouble. They came home fifth and sixth. It was a very long journey home.
MARK WALLIS The fifth worst moment is probably quite a funny one and it occurred in December 2009. Myself and Patrick (Janssens, assistant trainer) had gone to Henlow for their Winter Derby Final. It had started to snow before the race and I was sure they would cancel the meeting. But the management said ‘it might be snowing but the track is safe’. Sure enough the race was run and we were lucky enough to win it with Jogadusc Ace.
As they meeting wore on the snow got thicker and thicker and we had to get home. We set off and the roads were
treacherous. We got through Baldock and were heading towards Royston when we saw that all the cars in front of us were stationary. There is an enormous hill and lorries were sliding backwards down it.
We realized that there was nothing else for it so we got out of the van and started to help push the cars over the top of the ridge. Our van must have been 1,000 yards from the top of the hill and it was exhausting. We were pushing cars for over two hours and were absolutely on our knees by the end of it.
I can’t remember what time we got home, on virtually an empty tank. That was one winning night we will never forget.
JOGADUSC ACE’S owners brave the elements to pose with their Henlow Winter Derby winner. Pic Steve Nash
PAT ROSNEY I used to love the skulduggery of flapping. It was a game of cat and mouse between the owners and the bookies. Sometimes it was between the owners and other punters who would try to work out your plan and steal your market.
One trick was to try to get all the runners in an open, so you could decide the winner. The tracks were naturally suspicious of
Ellesmere Port
all entries to make sure it didn’t happen. One day, I realised that I had finally cracked it, when, using other people to make the entries, I had the entire field of five runners in a sprint open at Ellesmere Port. THIS should have been among my best memories . . .
At the time I had a top class black bitch who had won plenty of opens and I couldn’t get a price on her. She was the one to win it, up against four no-hopers.
We carefully chose the other four which included a couple of old stayers who couldn’t have run within eight lengths of my black bitch at their peak. There was another dog, too slow to grade and a black bitch who looked identical to the good one, but about 12 lengths slower. To make sure we got a decent price on the good bitch, I paraded the slow one.
The good black bitch duly won half the track and we thought we had cracked it. But then we found out the reality . . .
The people who were due to put on most of the money had become confused and backed the wrong one – the one I was leading round.
In fact, there had been so much money on the wrong bitch, that they pushed out the price of the winner, who ended up carrying a small amount of the original bet. We ended up just about breaking even but missed out on thousands.
We had an inquest after the race and reckoned that one day we would laugh about it. Hmm!
