If ever there was a greyhound named to be successful in the GRNSW + Ladbrokes Million Dollar Chase, it would have to be John Buttsworth’s dog engaged at Temora today.
John’s dog … Millionaire Max.
It would be like having a horse called Edmund Hillary racing in The Everest.
“Yeah when I rang up to nominate, the bloke said: “Gee he’s a logical choice for the series with a name like that,”” John recalled.
John is a realist. He knows it will be tough and that his heat is probably the strongest of the three the club will stage today, with electrifying youngster Club Double and the talented Champion Model among his rivals.
“Gee it’s a hot field,” he lamented. “That dog on Neil Staines’s, Club Double, I was at Grafton and I saw it win the heat of the big Maiden race, and it’s a flying machine and it went quick at Bulli recently took.
“Max is coming back after he dropped a back muscle in a trial at Goulburn. I’ve been trying to get him back, but he’s lost a little bit of zip, and he’s most probably three to four lengths slower than what he was before … but he’s coming along alright.
“I gave him a long time off, and there is no soreness there now. He’s going along alright and improving each time. Each trial I give him, he improves
“He’s a good chasing dog, and he goes good at Temora … he holds the track record at Temora.
“As soon as this series came along, I’m mostly rushed him, and look he’s probably a run short, that’s why I trialled him at Bathurst on Monday and I put him up the straight on Friday, just to give him one more hit out.
“Whatever he does on Sunday he’ll certainly improve on. I’d like to get into the final … and draw the eight too in the final.”
Millionaire Max has had 14 starts and won eight times and been unplaced only once, with those wins spread across Bulli, Bathurst, Richmond and of course Temora where he has had four starts for three wins, and a third in the Temora Cup final, two weeks after running a track record 25.61s in February.
Millionaire Max has not raced since finishing second to My Mate Fox at Bathurst on April 16, a track John is very familiar with.
“My father Dick was a director there for quite a while, and he was president for donkey’s years,” John said. “I’ve got the clock here given to him when he retired. It says he was a committeeman from the year I was born, 1947, to 1987. He was also a GBOTA director for 20 years.
“I’ve always been in dogs. Dad was a baker and he worked at a bake house and he used to go to work about four in the morning and of course the dogs had to be walked, so there I was as a 10-year-old (you couldn’t do it now) out walking three or four dogs of a morning for dad.
“I got the bug from there and this was always something I would get into.”
John has had his share of handy dogs over the years, and Millionaire Max’s mother, called Sad Movies won five races at Wentworth Park back in 2010-11. John is also reasonably excited about her next litter by leading sire Fernando Bale who are six months old.
John is hopeful Millionaire Max can advance to the Temora final, and then a one-two finish would mean a berth at Wentworth Park for the semi-finals on October 12.
“That’s my birthday. I’ll be a big 71 that day. That would be a great present and a great way to celebrate.”
