Thursday, March 21, 2019
Retired dairy farmer Gerald McKenna opened his winning account for this year when Zipping Melody scored a hard-fought win in the Swallow Drive Meats Stake (400 m) at Tara Raceway’s time-graded meeting on Wednesday afternoon.
Away only fairly from box five, she found the front down the back, eventually running out a head winner over Covfefe in 23.84 seconds.
For McKenna, whose last winner had been in early December with Mongolian Bay, the win came at Zipping Melody’s third start for him after the white and fawn bitch had previously raced in NSW where she had won a maiden at Nowra.
She’s now been with McKenna for about a month, finding her way to Koroit after having been with Ambarvale couple Garry and Janel Erwin who have trained greyhounds for McKenna for a number of years.
“Garry and Janel live in some pretty hilly country so his greyhounds are trained on walking machines,” McKenna said. “However, after about three months with Zipping Melody he was unable to get her to adapt to the walking machine so he asked me if I wanted to have a go with her.
“As it turned out, I have been able to get her going on my walking machine but really the main reason for her coming down here was as a brood bitch, my wife Carolyn and I now looking to breed a litter with her.”
Zipping Melody is by Fernando Bale out of Cho Chang, a winner of 11 races and $25,000 in stakemoney.
Meanwhile, Monarto South trainer Tony Hinrichsen, following three winners on March 6, wrapped up a big time-graded month at Tara Raceway when Giveaway Fury, Free Fury, Stiff Upper Lip and Spring Leesa were successful on Wednesday.