They say a year is a long time in greyhound racing.
12-months ago, almost to the day, Minnie Finn made the walk to the Goulburn 440m boxes with a precocious young pup named Zipping Orlando.
He was unraced, and although the kennel had a big wrap on him, you never quite know what you’ve got on the end of the lead until they perform in a field.
‘Orlando’ went on to win that day in a heat of the Ladbrokes Zoom Top Maiden by 6.75 lengths. A week later, he overran Rockstar Apollo and Len Me Dad to win the $25,000 final.
And what’s followed in the 51 weeks since has been incredible.
Victory in the 2022 Ladbrokes Zoom Top Maiden catapulted ‘Orlando’ onto the road to superstardom.
An eight-run unbeaten streak to open his career culminating in a dominate GRNSW Young Star final victory at Wentworth Park in September. Times of 29.54 and 29.65 during the series enough to seriously turn some heads (if they weren't turned already).
Zipping Orlando opened his career with eight straight wins, including the GRNSW Young Stars title
From there, the camp steered him towards staying events.
A tilt at the Ladbrokes Country Classic ended in the semi-finals, before he claimed the Group 1 Association Cup over 720m. If that wasn’t enough, the son of Zipping Garth then produced the finish of the year to snatch The Ladbrokes 715 from tearaway leader Nangar Rocket.
And on the eve of the Ladbrokes Southern Stars final, 'Orlando' has had 34 starts, is a 17-time winner and has claimed more than $790,000 in prizemoney.
A lot can happen in a year, and it all began in the 2022 Ladbrokes Zoom Top Maiden.
The series final field so far combining for a race record of 238 starts for 89 wins and 74 placings (good enough for a win rate of 37%), with accumulated career earnings of $1,228,820.
“It’s probably one of the best maidens we’ve had in recent years,” said ‘Orlando’s’ trainer Minnie Finn at the time.
“We knew Orlando was fast and had a lot of ability and he was trialling good as a pup, but when I was getting Gatlin ready for the Southern Stars [in 2022] at Goulburn I took Orlando down to trial too and he went just as good as the older dogs,” Finn added.
“That’s when we knew we had something good on our hands.”
The dogs who ran in behind him have almost all been involved in, or taken out, big races of their own in the last 12-months as well.
Rockstar Apollo, trained by Shaun Evans, went on to qualify second fastest for the G1 National Derby final in January, before eventually running fifth in the final behind the emerging superstar Victa Damian. He also made the final of the G3 Nowra Puppy Classic, again finishing fifth to Tarawi Rocky.
Rockstar Apollo (pictured here at Nowra) kicked off his career in the Ladbrokes Zoom Top Maiden for Shaun Evans and Kayla-Jane Coleman
“I didn’t know how good he was when we threw him in the Zoom Top [Maiden]. He had two 400m trials beforehand to build his fitness up and then in his heat he came out and blew them away, that’s when I thought we might have a handy one here. If you’ve got a decent one, my advice is to start pencilling in the race at Goulburn,’ Evans said in May.
Len Me Dad, a litter brother to G1 National Futurity winner Wyndra All Class, has already claimed a Group win in 2023, taking out the Maitland Cup for Ruth and Danielle Matic.
He also made the final of the G2 Bulli Gold Cup but was forced to withdraw due to injury.
“It’s unbelievable how many good dogs have come out of the Zoom Top Maiden. When we got Lenny back from the breakers around the end of March [last year], I remember in the car on the way home Dani and I were thinking about that race at Goulburn. That was our mission from the start,” Ruth Matic said.
Punter’s Bandit finished sixth in the 2022 Zoom Top Maiden final, with the Andy and JODIE Lord-prepared chaser already winning the most prizemoney of her fellow finalists (outside Orlando) with $186,455 in career earnings.
The daughter of Good Odds Harada claimed two feature races at Gosford within a month of one another early in 2023, finishing best in both the G2 Gosford Gold Cup and the newly formed Ladbrokes Summer Six-Hundy.
She ran in the finals of both the Dapto Middle Distance Championship and G1 Dapto Megastar late last year, while also taking part in the G1 Rookie Rebel at The Meadows. She too ran in the final of the Ladbrokes 715, finishing seventh behind Zipping Orlando.
Goulburn Greyhound Racing Club Track Manager, Pat Day, still blown away by the success of last year’s edition of the race.
“It’s fantastic to look back over the last year and see so many feature races littered with graduates of the 2022 Ladbrokes Zoom Top Maiden final. Zipping Orlando has proven to be a worthy winner of the race and many of the greyhounds involved in that final are entering their prime so we could be seeing even more success stories in the back half of this year,” Day said.
“$25,000 for a maiden sits well with participants. I think it’s getting to the stage where people know it’s on, it’s got a consistent spot on the calendar and it aligns with the Southern Stars race that we introduced last year as well,” he said.
And on Friday afternoon, the next crop of emerging talent will begin their quest to emulate the success of ‘Orlando’ – starting with another regally bred youngster for the Hallinan camp.
“Zipping Caleb is a half-brother to Zipping Kygrios and Zipping Maserati, and Zipping Ronaldo is in there as well. Minnie [Finn] thinks they have ability and they trialled around 25.10 at Goulburn on a slow track that day, but they’re just massive animals,” Hallinan said.
“They were 41.6kg and 42 kg when they left our place so they’ll be big and awkward. You go to check them and you can’t even keep your feet on the ground, they’re that high,” Hallinan laughed.
“There was eight in the litter and we kept six of them. We went down there and trialled them and they all went about 25.2 after the track was turned over,” Hurst said.
“If one of them went there and ran 24.5, I’d be telling ya, but Goods Odds Emma is their half-sister and she won the Dapto Megastar and the mother is from the same litter as Good Odds Harada and Feral Franky so the breeding is there,” he added.
“There’s nothing between the three dogs. They’re only 17-months of age so we’ve been taking it easy with them. They’ve seen the track twice so we’re trying to do the right thing with them and I hope they run well.”
While Team Matic is back with four runners, a year after Len Me Dad’s game third-placed effort in the event.
2022 Ladbrokes Zoom Top Maiden placegetter Len Me Dad
“Three of them are from the one litter, Scurryfunge, Few and Far and Like Luke. They’ve got no early pace though so I’m unsure this race will suit them, but we decided months ago to get them ready for it because it’s a good kick off race for young dogs,” Matic said.
“The box draws won’t help the littermates. If they’d drawn the wings, they might have been able to do something but they might find trouble from the guts. I know Orlando won the race last year being a bit slower out but these guys aren’t Orlando’s,” she added.
“Like Luke is probably the quickest of them and little Scurryfunge looks like she’ll run 700, she runs 440m at the moment and doesn’t even open her mouth.”
While Prince Of Panama is the next litter out of Len Me Dad’s mum, Winxette.
“He’s the best crasher in the world so Box 7 won’t suit him. We’ve been to Goulburn with them a bunch of times to get them ready for this race, they would have gone around there 20 times to prepare for it so we’ll see how they go,” Matic said.
The 2023 Zoom Top Maiden series heats will be run on Friday, July 28, with the final to be held a week later on August 4.
*parts of this story were originally published in May, 2023
