Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Greyhound breeding has certainly changed the world over with frozen semen these days available from stud dogs, both past and present.
A case in point is Angelo’s Entity, a winner of his past two starts at Tara Raceway and looking a good chance again on Thursday in the Gordon Refrigeration Stake (512 m) for Tim Aloisi and Matt Lehman and Allendale East trainer David Peckham.
The black dog is by Token Prince, a winner of 10 races from only 14 starts, who died in August 2009 after a spectacular stud career saw him sire more than 4000 offspring.
By Malawi’s Prince, Token Prince was bred 40 kilometres south of Adelaide at McLaren Vale in September 1995 by Don and Helen Foster. His dam, True Temptation, was a terrific race bitch for them, winning 29 races and possessing great strength.
Perhaps the strength was no real surprise, her dam Bay Supreme winning over the distance at Olympic Park and Sandown Park while her granddam was the great SA stayer Bay Road Queen.
Token Prince found his way up to NSW as a pup but the Fosters retained a pretty handy litter brother in Awesome McLaren who also went on to prove successful at stud when standing in Queensland.
Another blast from the past this week came after a clean-up at the Tara Raceway clubrooms unearthed a long-forgotten framed race picture taken by Mount Gambier photographer Arthur R. Cram.
This was of an 8 Dog Exhibition Race run at Mount Gambier on Saturday, August 2, 1975 and won by the H. L. Mason owned and Frank Brennan trained Yacca Ridge Lass, a well-bred daughter of Top Bomber and Tara Molly.
Run over 300 yards (274 metres), the exhibition race was known as a speed course and the first to be run at Mount Gambier, preceding licensed mechanical lure racing at Glenburnie by four years.