For most trainers their career highlights are a special Wentworth Park win or perhaps an interstate success, but for the central coast’s John Miles his big thrill was winning a race at a non-TAB track.
John, now entering his 45th year in a distinguished career in the sport, plumps for Chasing Glory’s win in the 2012 final of the Tweed Heads Galaxy as his finest moment.
"For years I went to Tweed Heads for a holiday over the Queen’s Birthday weekend in June and it was a race I always wanted to win," he said.
"In 2005 I had a finalist in Tommie’s Placard, but although she was a flying machine who won 17 races she ran second to the Tasmanian Lilli Pilli Power.
"The Galaxy at Border Park has always been among Australia’s prestige sprint races and when I took Chasing Glory and All Tommie there in 2012 famous trainers like Graeme Bate, Reg Kay and Jason Mackay were among my rivals.
"Chasing Glory won the final while All Tommie, who had broken the Gosford 400m record four months earlier, took out the consolation final.
"All Tommie’s record breaking 22.61 win at Gosford is not far behind the Galaxy as my favourite moment, especially as nearly two years later it still stands.
"In last year’s Galaxy I ran second with Chasing Glory, behind John Dart’s Pierino, while my dogs All Tommie and Chasing De Cash won both consolation finals.’’
Like many participants John’s interest in the sport was fuelled by a workmate, in this case Fred Carey, who was an employee of the central coast plumbing and tank making business owned by John’s family.
"Fred was a trainer and at 15 I started accompanying him to watch his dogs trial," John recalled.
"I liked a punt in those days and would go to WYONG horse races to have a bet and was fascinated to learn that the greyhounds also raced down the home straight.
"I was captain of the Ocean Beach Surf Club and in March, 1969, I bought my first greyhound puppies off one of our members, Gordon Gibson.
"They were no good, winning one race apiece, at Lithgow and Gosford, and I was so naïve I even bred a litter from one of them.
"Things turned around when I bought a bitch called Tiny Modesty from Fay Polman, a top breeder who trained the outstanding sprinters Tientsin Tosca and Tientsin Tabu and combined training greyhounds with showing Pekingese dogs.
"Tiny Modesty won her way through the grades at Gosford and one of her pups, Modest King, gave me my first city winner, on the grass at Wentworth Park in the mid 1970s.
"To learn more about training I would make weekly visits to the Berowra home of Ron Rudd, who died last year, and he was a fountain of knowledge.
"You’re never too old to learn and even now my mentor is Johnny Munro at Mulbring.
"Best advice I can give young trainers is you must get to know your dogs by observing them constantly.
"Once I noticed a dog of mine could not hold his leg up for long while he was urinating and it turned out he had a back problem which, when rectified, turned his career around.
"I mostly breed, rear, break in and train my own family’s dogs on just over 12 acres at Killcare, but the best I’ve trained for anyone else would be Laurie’s Placard, who won 20 races, including four in a row at Wentworth Park, for Woy Woy Poultry proprietor Laurie Refalo.
"My daughter-in-law Noeline Walsh, who lives at Coolabah, between Nyngan and Bourke, owned Black Warhorse, who won 30 of 60 starts, and who took out the Nowra Puppy Classic as well as breaking the MUDGEE and Tamworth records.
"And my Galaxy runner-up Tommie’s Placard was not only a terrific front-runner but at stud she produced five litters, comprising four individual track record holders.
"My favourite track is my local course, Gosford, and I don’t miss a meeting there, catching up with friends every Tuesday even if I don’t have a starter.
"I was fortune enough to have seen Zoom Top in action in the late 1960s and she is unquestionably the best. What other greyhound could win a top grade 300 yard race up the straight 48 hours before beating the best stayers in Australia over 800 yards at Harold Park?
"And I picked up good advice from her trainer Hec Watt, who told me he gave Zoom Top a lukewarm hydrobath on the morning of her races, something that was unheard of in those days.
"I took that on board and it seems to spark the greyhounds up before they head to the races."
