The 2013 NSW Trainer of the Year Jason MACKAY is hoping his kennel's good form continues in today's heats of the Group 2 PPK Mining Gold Cup at Maitland.
MACKAY has Zipping Willow and Fire Elusive taking part in the seven cup heats and is cautiously optimistic that both will progress to the final next Thursday night.
Fire Elusive will line up in heat two and faces some tough opposition including Nosey Rozy who is returning after a long layoff from injury and in-form chasers Zipping Tess and Mr Babicci.
MACKAY has only recently started training the greyhound, but believes he knows enough about the dog to see his future potential.
"He's quite a new-comer to my kennels. His owner and previous trainer Mark Moroney has gone back to work full-time so he's now with me," he said.
"He won last week at Maitland and I brought him home after that to see if we can push on and keep that good bit of form up.
"His heat is a very even race. There are some really good dogs in it.
"I'm still figuring him out, but box two should help him. He goes straight out the boxes and he's got the race experience to sort himself out.
"He's a chance, but I'm not being too over-confident because it will be a tough assignment."
MACKAY's other runner Zipping Willow will line up in heat five. She will line-up from box six against the Mark Gatt trained Gradence in box five and King Sapphire from box two who look to be the main competition.
Zipping Willow is back in NSW after a campaign at the start of the year in Victoria and MACKAY hopes her experience interstate will be an advantage for her in the race.
"She's back from Victoria now and she is relishing being back at home so she's a definite chance in her heat," he said.
"She had a few good runs down in Victoria but she had big problems working out the boxes down there and was slowly away a lot of the time.
"Hopefully she regathers her form in NSW and gets her timing out the boxes right again.
"Box six is not ideal for her, but Gradence is usually tardy away so she should hopefully get a nice run early."
MACKAY will be using the runs of both Fire Elusive and Zipping Willow for a gauge on where he will head in the future with the duo.
"They will probably both go on to the Golden Easter Egg but we'll have to play it by ear and see how they go through the Maitland Cup series," he said.
