When Len and Evelyn Harris nominated Magic Display for the biggest greyhound race in New South Wales – the Macro Meats Golden Easter Egg - they never thought their young star would be lining up for the $250,000 final three weeks later.
Magic Display ($31.10) (pictured, white rug) qualified for the final with a brilliant front-running win in her semi final on Saturday night, beating the series favourite Buckle Up Wes, in a time of 29.80.
The Harrises are very superstitious, and Evelyn is reluctant to speak to media in fear of “jinxing” Magic Display’s chances in the Golden Easter Egg final. As a result, Len has become the greyhound’s unofficial spokesman.
While Magic Display’s wins in the heat and semi finals have shocked punters, Len Harris knew that his star chaser was capable of performing well in the Golden Easter Egg series if she did everything right.
"She only started racing in July last year, and back then we thought we may have had something special, but she has just come on in leaps and bounds since then," he said.
"Since the start of this year she just seems to be doing everything right. We thought after her performances recently that she could handle the (Golden Easter) Egg series, so we decided to have a go and put her in.
"We brought her along nice and steady before the series and she just seems to keep growing to the occasion."
Harris admits he was quietly confident going into the heats, given Magic Display's good record at Wentworth Park.
"I thought she would win her heat because she just seems to love Wentworth Park," he said.
"She's had eight starts now for five wins and two thirds so I don't think there's a question over whether she handle the track."
While he is satisfied with her form, Harris hopes that with a bit of extra work during the week Magic Display will improve for the final.
"Evelyn and I seem to have her right in the first sections, so we worked on her run home last week by giving her an extra slip up the track and it seems to have worked because she improved her run-home time in the semi-final," he said.
"She's got the fastest first two splits out of all the dogs in the final and she's a length off the fastest time of the night.
"So we've only got to try and improve by another tenth of a second on the run home and she will be very competitive."
Magic Display has drawn box five for the final, a draw Harris admits will be tough to win from.
"In her three finals this year she has drawn the four, five and six so we didn't think we could have anymore bad luck with draws but she got the five again," he said.
"We would have loved to have got the three. I have a lot of luck with box three and because she won her heat and semi from box three it just would have been fantastic.
"But it just didn't turn out that way.
"It's going to be tough from box five especially with the calibre of dogs in the race."
Harris is realistic about what his chaser will need to do to take out the final title.
"She can't win coming from behind, so she's going to need to be in front to have any chance of winning," he said.
"They'll swamp her in end so I reckon she needs to be eight lengths in front at the back to hold them off.
"I never count my chickens before they hatch. There's so much that could go wrong so all we can really do is cross our fingers and hope that she continues the way she has been going the past two weeks."
Len and Evelyn have been training greyhounds for more than 40 years and Len ranks Magic Display among the best.
"We've won a lot of races before but she is one of the best we've ever had," he said.
A win in the series would mean a lot to the two trainers whose life is consumed by greyhound racing.
"It's greyhound racing's Melbourne Cup equivalent so to win it would just be an amazing thrill.
"We just love this game. We breed, rear and train all our dogs and we've been doing it for a long time."
Life for the Harris' goes on despite the long week ahead when Black Nat Bonus, a litter sister to Magic Display competes in the Central Coast Sprint Series final at Gosford tomorrow night.
Harris hopes that Black Nat Bonus will be able to continue on the family's run of form but is disappointed that their run of bad luck with box draws has continued.
"She's in the race so we have a chance, but we just can't get any luck with box draws of late. She'll do it tough from box six," Harris admitted.
"She was the fastest qualifier, but the top five dogs in the final are all only about a length apart from their times in the heats.
So being the fastest qualifier is good but she's only the fastest by about a nose so anything could happen in the final."
