Dubbo mainstays Shayne Stiff and Charmaine Roberts have never won a Group 1 Ladbrokes National Futurity title, but they head into Friday night’s Heats of the annual classic with a set of sisters more than capable of making their mark.
Candice, Cindy and Camilla (all with the Keeping prefix attached) will tackle the preliminaries of the $75,000 series, with Stiff hopeful they can emulate the feats of feature final winning mother Caitlyn Keeping.
“It’d be nice if at least one could take after mum because she won the Black Top, a Bathurst Gold Cup and a Dubbo Gold Cup. They were only worth $10,000 back then unlike what’s on offer now but,” Stiff laughed
“Caitlyn [Keeping] was a nice race bitch and her first litter has been really good to us with the likes of Return Mac, Kip Keeping and Melissa Keeping all running well. This new lot are showing something too though and I was just saying to Wayne Billett (GRNSW Deputy CEO) this morning that you’re spoilt for choice if you’ve got good dogs now because there are big races all over the place to chase.”
And as far as big races go, it is hard to go past the 60 years of history the Ladbrokes National Futurity brings to the table.
“The Futurity and the Derby are time-honoured events and it’s the making of a lot of young bitches and dogs. You go back through the records books and it takes a good young greyhound to win these races and it’s a real feather in the cap for the victors,” Stiff added.
The 54-year-old aware of the quality set to be unleashed in the four Futurity Heats on Friday night, but hopeful his girls can measure up after all breaking the 30 second barrier over the Wentworth Park 520m in the last month.
“Candice Keeping has the two box (Heat 1), that will suit her and she’s improving with every run. Cindy Keeping (Heat 2) is Charmaine’s pick of the three and she really likes her a lot. She was one of the slowest to break in, but she just gets better with every trial and race.”
“And Camilla Keeping (Heat 3) is the fastest and has gone 29.58 in town but she’s not fool proof yet. They can all do something wrong, miss the kick or run up the backside of something because they didn’t have a lot of trials before racing because they were going so good.”
Camilla Keeping set for a mouth-watering matchup with Victorian trial star Aunt Virginia who ran 29.49 four days ago in her first look at the track.
“If that Melbourne bitch [Aunt Virigina] gets out and on the lure, Camilla will need all sorts of luck to sit on her tail. She looks very smart and tough to beat,” Stiff said.
“But we know ours are giving away a lot in age and experience. They were whelped in May of 2022 so they’re only 20-months-old but they’re going good, and we’ll see what they can do.”
The kennel also keen to test out the trio over further after the Group 1 series wraps up, with a big race in their own backyard well and truly on the radar as well.
“Off the dam’s side we’d say they’re no chance of running 600…but off Mogambo’s side it might be a different story. They’re so clean winded and work so well at home that Charmaine thinks they’ll get over the middle distance,” Stiff said.
Stiff (pictured) had 77 winners in NSW across the 2023 season
“And that’s what we were hoping for when we used an old straw of Mogambo from Marty Hallinan. He was the sire of a champion stayer called Sweet It Is and he threw a lot of strength into his line. So I sat on that straw for quite a long time because I knew he’d put strength into some pups."
"And it looks like we’ve got what we wanted because for young bitches, they’re strong and chase hard and we couldn’t be happier. There's also a big race coming up at Dubbo in March (The Ladbrokes Country Classic) that we wouldn’t mind winning so that's the longer term goal.”
Four Heats of the 2024 Group 1 Ladbrokes National Futurity will be run at Wentworth Park on Friday, January 12. The top two from each Heat will progress to the $75,000 final on January 20.
