With the minimum age for greyhounds racing on SA tracks being 16 months, January 2020 whelping Silver Cadillac barely made the cut when he lined up for his second run in the space of four days at Tara Raceway on Thursday afternoon.
The blue fawn dog had pleased his Edenhope owner-trainer Cap Abbott on the Sunday prior when running a 3¾ lengths second on debut to Compton Crystal over 400 metres.
“I was rapt with his first-up effort because it was the first time he had gone around with other dogs,” Abbott had said after the run.
And Silver Cadillac is obviously a quick learner. Drawn in box five in Thursday’s Metal Worx Maiden Stake (400 m), he led all the way, eventually running out an eight lengths winner in a best of day 23.36 seconds over littermate Limousine who is raced in the same interests.
By Aston Kimetto, the littermates are out of Ruby Spring, a winner of 13 races on NSW provincial and country tracks. She is also a sister to 22-race winner Leo’s Gift who won the 2017 Group 2 Warrnambool Cup (450 m) and all told collected $157,000 in stakemoney.
Abbott picked up three of the unbroken litter at 11 months of age after they had been advertised on Greyhound-Data by NSW breeder Alex Verhagen of Swan Bay.
“Some people don’t like buying 11-month-old pups because they reckon they could have been tried,” he said. “I’ve never had an issue with it. Besides, it cuts out some of the waiting time.”
Later in the day, Abbott brought up his second double for the month when Cadillac Prince took the lead down the back in the Exchange Printers 1-4 Wins Stake (512 m) before holding off Compton Brett to win by 1½ lengths in 30.31 seconds.
Following wins on May 6 with Fairy Wand and Banjo Bliss, and then yesterday’s wins, he has now trained 26 winners at Tara Raceway this year.
