A chance encounter with friends at nearby Bankstown trotting track nearly 50 years ago launched NSW Northern Rivers trainer Reg Gardoll into a successful career as a greyhound trainer.
Gardoll, whose promising greyhound Lady Spring gave the mighty He Knows Uno's Grafton 610m record a shake last week, was working as a welder "across the road'' from the Bankstown circuit when he met up with acquaintances leaving the course.
"They happened to be friends with Johnny Sparks, a successful trainer who was also the proprietor of the Leppington greyhound trial track,'' Gardoll recalls.
"Before I knew it I was hanging out at Leppington track giving Johnny a hand with the trials and with the team of greyhounds he trained.
"One day I was helping Johnny trial some of his dogs at another track, New York Lodge at Hoxton Park, when a fellow offered me a greyhound as a gift.
"That was 48 years ago, when I was 20, and that's when I became a trainer, winning my first race at Moss Vale with the giveaway dog named Razen Panther.
"Johnny Sparks was my mentor and in 1980 I trained my first city winner Cathy's Reject, who won at Wentworth Park for her owners Dot and Carl Inskip.''
Gardoll was born and grew up in WELLINGTON, in western NSW, but at 19 moved to the outer Sydney suburb of Leppington before he and his wife Elva shifted to Austral where they became proprietors of boarding kennels for greyhounds.
"Elva and I took over Austral Kennels from the late Jack Saunders, and there we boarded as many as 80 greyhounds at a time,'' Gardoll said. "Not long after we got there we were also training a team of eight to 10 race dogs.
"The best I trained were Secret Secret, who won a Wentworth Park Chairman's Cup, Pretty Hilo, who won 28 races and reached two finals at Wentworth Park, including a Country Championship decider, and Iluka Lilly, winner of 25 races.
"But none was as good as Watch The Web, with whom I won the 2005 Group 1 Vic Peters Classic at Harold Park.
"I was lucky to get Watch The Web to train as a friend of mine, Bobby Burns, had given another mate, Terry Smith, a greyhound named Missy Web in order to breed a litter of pups.
"When she whelped the pups to Awesome Assassin, Terry sold two, and a brand new owner to the sport, John Ford, bought one of them. John gave his pup, which raced as Watch The Web, to me to train. The rest is history.''
These days Reg and Elva Gardoll train 10 greyhounds on 15 acres at Pillar Valley, 30km from Grafton on the road to Ballina.
"Until recently while I did the training Elva reared puppies for other people, and He Knows Uno was among the good dogs she raised,'' Gardoll said.
Grafton is Reg Gardoll's "local'' track so not surprisingly, it is his favourite circuit.
"But if I have greyhounds good enough to take to Albion Park or Wentworth Park, there is nothing wrong with either of those courses either,'' Gardoll said.
"For sheer speed the best greyhound I have seen was Brett Lee, the 2001 Golden Easter Egg winner.
"But while I only saw her briefly, when I was starting out in dogs, Zoom Top, the late 1960s champ, was the all time greatest. She could beat the best over any distance, on any track, at any time.''
