Despite ordinary weather conditions, last Sunday’s Mount Gambier Greyhound Racing Club’s Christmas meeting at Tara Raceway attracted a good crowd on course to witness the 11th running of the Williams Crane Hire Christmas Cup over 512 metres.
The first Williams Crane Hire Christmas Cup was run in 2015 and won by the Compton-based Tracie Price trained Fear The Rascal in a time of 30.09 seconds.
Since then winners to follow have been Glenville Jester 30.05 (trained by Richard Clayfield), Hit The Runway 30.42 (Nicole Stanley), Hutch 29.86 (Robert Halliday) and Squishy Pea 29.63 (David Peckham).
Then in 2020 followed Golly Gumdrops 29.95 (Tracie Price), Bungaloo Anne 30.15 (John Little), Aston Ziebell 29.34 (David Peckham), Mister Banjo 29.63 (Tracie Price) and Minnie’s My Mum (Tracie Price).
But this year it had been a case of Ben Price looking to follow in his father Tracie’s footsteps after Huntsman, a 3½-year-old son of Koblenz and Maddison Kaye, had impressed in a heat the previous week when winning by 10¼ lengths in 29.66 seconds.
Raced by Price and Tanner Ahl, the 35½ kilogram fawn dog was purchased by the pair at the end of August from fellow Compton-based trainer Robert Chuck who had won 14 races with Huntsman – bred at Strathalbyn by Deb Stuppos.
And despite the rain easing off for the final and the after-race presentation, this was always going to be a race in which the winner would be clocking a time a fair way outside that of Aston Ziebell’s 29.34 seconds race record run back in 2022.
An odds-on favourite in the final, despite drawing box six, Huntsman never really looked like losing when virtually leading all the way and defeating this year’s Labour Day Cup winner Swift Gift by five lengths in 31.21 seconds.
Young Price handled himself very well at the Christmas Cup presentation – and missed no one – from Josh Williams of Williams Crane Hire through to Huntsman’s previous owner-trainer.
He’s now giving consideration to The Tankman 600, a $6000 one-off race that will be run at the Family Fun Day meeting on Sunday, January 18.
“Actually, he’s only ever raced twice over 600 metres and that was when Chuckie owned him. But he had gone pretty well, winning on both occasions. He defeated Canya Striker in March this year in 34.93 seconds and Starlight Jewel a couple of months later in 35.16 seconds.
“Obviously if he could reproduce that sort of form again over the middle-distance journey then he would be pretty hard to beat in The Tankman 600,” Price said.
Meanwhile, earlier in the day, the Peter Whitehead Memorial maiden final was run over 400 metres.
Peter Whitehead had at one stage trained out at the Price kennels so it was perhaps fitting that the inaugural memorial in 2019 had been won by the Price-trained Elle Limes.
The 2020 memorial was won by Sally Limes (Tracie Price) with subsequent winners being Smiling Stan (Nifty Lenehan), Compton Robbie (Robert Halliday), High On Life (Tracie Price) and Hey You Guys (Steve Bartholomew).
As far as last Sunday’s final was concerned it was another win for Price after Compton Stella, a daughter of Bernardo and Rhonda Lily, led all the way from box one for a three-quarter length win over Michael Niele’s Appellant in 24.33 seconds.
Interestingly, Opal Limes, a daughter of Aston Rupee and Elle Limes, had qualified for the final however finished in fourth place for Mortlake trainer Peter Crawley.
But later in the day the Kevin Bouchier owned and David Peckham trained littermate Lenny Limes won the Quickmix Concrete Group Stake (400 m) by a half-length over Vodka Sunrise in 24.38 seconds.