WILLOW">ZIPPING WILLOW will bypass Thursday’s Sapphire Crown heats at Sandown Park so she can contest the listed Unibet Richmond Oaks heats on Saturday night, following her win in the Group 3 Evans & Son JeWellers Ladies Bracelet at Wentworth Park.
ZIPPING-WILLOW">ZIPPING">ZIPPING WILLOW, who ran down Ritza Hattie to take out Saturday night’s Ladies Bracelet will be accompanied to Richmond by her litter sister and kennelmate ZIPPING Summah.
ZIPPING Summah was preferred to ZIPPING-WILLOW">ZIPPING WILLOW in betting in the Ladies Bracelet final but ruined her chances her with a tardy start and finished fifth.
Also contesting the Richmond Oaks will be Rue De Kahn, who ran down Fire Elusive to score at Wentworth Park on Saturday night.
But the Sapphire Crown will still have strong NSW representation with Ritza Hattie heading to Melbourne along with Golden Easter Egg finalist, Magic Display.
The Evelyn Harris-trained Magic Display scored her sixth Wentworth Park win on Saturday night.
"We don’t think Richmond would suit our bitch so we are going to Sandown," Evelyn’s husband Len said.
"I really believe that Magic Display only has to draw a decent box to be capable of winning a group race final."
ZIPPING WILLOW’s 29.44 effort in Saturday’s Ladies Bracelet smashed the race record of 29.66 set by Victoria’s Tonneli Bale in 2011.
After the final trainer Jason Mackay said: "When ZIPPING Wilow was trailing Ritza Hattie entering the back straight I had my doubts about whether she could run down such a high quality greyhound.
"But she really performed going down the back straight, with getting a clean start the key to her win.
"I had intended taking (ZIPPING) WILLOW and (ZIPPING) Summah to Melbourne for the Sapphire Crown but I’ve had a few issues with these bitches and if I put them through a sequence of long travelling at this stage I might lose them again."
Electro Storm’s 10th Wentworth Park win on Saturday night gave a boost to his veteran owner Ray Matterson, who has been in ill health.
Ray, who trained the former Singleton record holder Electro Eagle in the 1970s, has been laid low with a badly infected leg.
Electro Storm’s trainer MAJELLA Ferguson said on Saturday: "Ray told me before the race that on top of his health problems he had received a water bill for $400 so I quipped, ‘Well the dog had better perform tonight hadn’t he?'"
"After the race Ray phoned me and he was crying with joy."
MAJELLA’s husband Craig Ferguson added: "I was far from confident tonight because Electro Storm had box four and there was a lot of pace around him.
"Because of that MAJELLA had kept him very fresh and fortunately when the boxes opened the field seemed to open up for our dog and he went straight to the front."
Biggest shock of the weekend’s Wentworth Park racing was the lowering of Bright Ebony’s decade old first split sectional record time on Friday night.
Bright Ebony, trained by Jimmy Madigan at Grafton, had clocked 5.26 for the first split at Wentworth Park around 10 years ago and although the track is much faster these days those figures had stood the test of time until Friday.
And the new record holder is not a group one star but Greenock Girl, who was not only making her Wentworth Park debut on Friday but was coming off a humble win in a 440m race at a non-TAB meeting at Potts Park.
Greenock Girl, who held on to win after recording her extraordinary first split, is trained at Chipping Norton by Geoff Greville and is a litter sister to Geoff’s dual Wentworth Park winner Midnight Toast.
See you next week!
