Qld's dashing national bid

THE national championships of greyhound racing will be run in Perth tomorrow week.

Representing Queensland will be Seminole in the distance championship and Dashing Corsair in the sprint series.

Both greyhounds have been in the news, for more than simply their fine form to win the state finals at Albion Park in Brisbane last week.

Seminole's trainer Mick Thrupp passed away three days before the consistent stayer won the state distance title. The well-liked 60 year old, who lived at Waterford near Beenleigh, had fought a battle with cancer over seven years.

Dashing Corsair is trained at Burpengary, north of Brisbane, by Dwyer Lennon, who moved there last year from Churchable.

Lennon and his family had formed a good relationship with their neighbour, 83-year-old Paddy Fitch, while living at Churchable.

Fitch, who breeds two or three litters of greyhound pups each year and assigns them to various trainers, gave Dashing Corsair to Lennon to train. The dog's results have been outstanding.

“Dashing Corsair is a natural race dog. There's something special built into him, he's a true professional,” Fitch said.

Fitch knows what she is talking about. She has bred various breeds of dogs, going back to her days living in Africa in the 1960s.

“I moved from England to West Africa and met my husband in Kenya in 1962,” Fitch said.

“In 1970, we moved to Australia, and lived in Sydney. I retired to Queensland in 1991. We had bred bull terriers in Africa and Scottish terriers in Sydney. I became interested in greyhounds when I moved to Queensland, bought some pups and now I breed my own.”

The National Sprint and Distance Championships in Perth are worth $50,000 each to the winner.

“The prizemoney is much better than ribbons and bows we used to win with the terriers,” Fitch enthused.

But Fitch won't be travelling to Perth next week.

“I don't get to the racetracks nowadays, I watch all my runners on Sky Channel here at home. And I'll definitely be staying up late to watch Dashing Corsair in Perth, hopefully winning.”

Grandchester-based trainer Tony Brett continued to stamp his mark on the Ipswich Young Guns last Wednesday night.

Brett's Velocity Force led all the way in race record time of 30.57 seconds to take the $10,000 winner's prize, and give the trainer four wins in the event in the past seven years.

Velocity Force is owned by Steve Williams, Lionel White and Steve Mason. Williams and White are business associates.

Velocity Force now heads to the heats of the Ipswich Futurity, a $5000 to the winner series, which commences on Wednesday night.

Ipswich greyhound racing was in the news on Tuesday when only two dogs started in race nine.

I know plenty of people who don't follow greyhound racing closely, but took a keen interest in what was certainly something different.

It was originally a field of six, but four of the runners were scratched, due to various minor injuries.

Patricia Carrington's Paddy Bell and Big Baz for Graeme Greensill were the two runners.

A margin of about a head separated them past the winning post the first time in the 520 metres event.

At the actual finish, the official margin was a head in favour of the $1.30 favourite Paddy Bell.

On the TAB, there was win only betting, and the pool was a surprisingly high $9,931. In the race before, the win pool was $11,027. The race after held a win pool of $8,831. Both those events had full fields of eight runners.

I can't recall ever seeing a two dog race at a greyhound meeting, apart from a very occasionally scheduled match race.

Our Friday twilight tip for the Showgrounds today is the John Pay trained Special Ethel, number eight in race eight at 6.02pm.

We bombed out when Gold Sonata ran third last week.