Last week 91-year-old Frank Sanotti, NSW's oldest registered trainer, won at Wentworth Park with Lights Out Tony but it was 84-year-old Warren Slade's time in the spotlight at headquarters on Saturday night.
Slade won with Eye Rock, who scored his 17th win and took his earnings to nearly $62,000 with an all-the-way win in a 520m fourth and fifth grade.
"I took out a trainer's licence when I was 18, so have been training officially for 66 years,'' Slade said.
While Slade may have held a licence for 66 years, his links with greyhound racing go back to the early 1940s.
"When I was eight years old I spent a school holiday with my uncle, Stan Maher, who was one of the state's leading trainers,'' Slade recalled.
"His kennels were on Ash Island, over the bridge from Hexham, and it was from there that he trained Cola Minda, who won the 1953 group 1 Vic Peters Classic.
"That holiday changed my life because I was so rapt in uncle Stan's greyhounds and the lifestyle there, I refused to go home.
"I pleaded with my parents to let me stay permanently with uncle Stan and they relented, so I began attending a little primary school on Ash Island.
"Before and after school I exercised Stan's dogs and later took jobs were on a dairy farm and at an abattoirs, before managing to take up greyhound training on a full-time basis.''
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Sydney's champion stayer Blue Moon Rising (pictured) scored his 30th win at his 102nd start on Friday night, taking out his heat of the group 1 Bold Trease over 715m at Sandown.
Blue Moon Rising led throughout in 41.79, with NSW bred Boom Down setting the time standard at 41.63 and Blazing Cartier, trained in Melbourne but owned by Sydneysider Tomas Rees, winning in 41.68.
Although Blue Moon Rising is a group 1 winner and established group race competitor, Melinda Finn, whose husband John trains the dog, is not confident about landing next Friday's $105,000 to the winner final.
"Blue Moon Rising's first split of 6.10sec was fastest of the heats and he has drawn okay in box three in the final,'' Finn said.
"But Boom Down is going to be awfully hard to hold out now that he has come up with box one.
"For Blue Moon Rising to be really hard to beat we probably needed Boom Down to be drawn out wide.
"Boom Down looks like getting the run of the race because he is a terrific railer and is so strong at the finish.''
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Blazing Cartier, who has box six in the Bold Trease, is prepared by master trainer of stayers Robert Britton for Sydney's Tomas Rees.
Rees bought Blazing Cartier as a 12 week old puppy from north coast breeders Michelle and Michael Jones, and after training the greyhound to win twice over 720m at WP in August, transferred her to Britton.
Blazing Cartier has scored three wins and five placings from nine Victorian outings and is giving Rees, a former construction worker, a great ride.
"I got hooked on the sport racing after paying just $500 for my first greyhound, Little Red, who went on to earn $22,600 and won over 720m at Wenty Park in June, 2014,'' Rees said.
