Wednesday, December 4, 2019
A busy conclusion to the Mount Gambier Greyhound Racing Club’s 2019 season is to be followed by an equally busy start to 2020 with the first of the weekly Thursday time-graded fixtures commencing on January 2 prior to the running of the New Year’s Open at the Sunday meeting three days later.
To be run over 600 metres, the New Year’s Open will be complemented by the final of a Grade Five series (400 m), heats of which are to be run at the Tara Raceway Boxing Day twilight meeting on Thursday, December 26.
The Tara Trackstar No. 2 is set to be run on Sunday, January 12. This is a one-off race over 512 metres for the best performed greyhounds at Tara Raceway between July and December 2019 with leading contenders announced after the final meeting of the year on Sunday, December 29.
Also on this day will be heats over 512 metres of the time-honoured Sims Maiden Memorial, the final to be run on Sunday, January 19. Sunday racing for the month concludes with the Australia Day Open (512 m) on January 26.
And there has been an addition to the December racing calendar, heats of the Peter Whitehead Memorial for maiden greyhounds to be run over 400 metres on Sunday, December 15 with the final at the Christmas meeting a week later.
“Spider” Whitehead, who died in December 2017 at the age of 68, was a long-time greyhound racing participant, previously having enjoyed a successful local football career at South Gambier, Nangwarry and Glencoe.
One of the first dogs he trained was Blue Gothic who won four of his 24 starts with Whitehead always maintaining that he would have been his best dog but for the rookie trainer having no idea as to what he was doing!