Thursday, April 4, 2019
Galactic Athena, the locally bred, owned and trained winner of last Sunday’s Group Listed Fairthorne Forestry Mount Gambier Cup (512 m) has been awarded the Greyhound Racing SA March Greyhound of the Month which now places her in the running for SA Greyhound of the Year.
And for those fortunate enough to have been on track last Sunday to see the 19-month-old bitch’s amazing performance when she ran down Slingshot Hammer to win in a race record time of 29.43 seconds the award would have come as no real surprise.
In fact, so dominant was the effort that Galactic Athena was also awarded the March Run of the Month, the last local greyhound to win this award being Rockoon in July last year when he ran a Tara Raceway 512 metre track record time of 29.28 seconds.
By the Canadian-bred Paddy Whacker out of Galactic Rumball, who raced on only 21 occasions for three Tara Raceway wins, Galactic Athena is owned by the breeder, Robert Chuck of Moorak and trained at Worrolong by Steve Bartholomew who reported on Wednesday that she had pulled up pretty well.
“We had her checked out yesterday and I’m pleased to report that there wasn’t too much wrong with her,” he said.
“The plan is now to give her a couple of runs at Warrnambool over 450 metres as a lead-up to the heats of the Group 2 Warrnambool Cup which will be run on Wednesday, April 24 with the final a week later.
“We might be flying too high, I don’t know, but I reckon we’ve got to have a go. Later in the year there will be age-restricted events for her such as the SA Oaks and the Sandown Park Laurels as well as the Sapphire Crown Classic for bitches.”
Interestingly, Steve and Lee Bartholomew already have in their possession the inaugural Laurels sash won by Newman McDonnell’s Tara Princess in 1964. They reckon a sash of their own would complement the trophy cabinet very nicely.