Greyhound News: Wise Thought leads All England market

Greyhounds News / Editor / 02 November 2009 / Leave a Comment

"Favourite for the All England after last week's heats is Wise Thought [4.2]."

Open-race season hots up with Wise Thought as All England fav, storm warning for Derby 2010, Mac back in the groove and all the rest of the week's greyhounds news.

Greyhound racing's open-race bandwagon steps up a gear this week with 'Super Tuesday,' the pick of the nights with the heats of the Yorkshire St Leger at Doncaster and the semi-finals of the All England Cup at Newcastle.

The last-named competition will feature on the BAGS/SIS service ahead of next Wednesday's final, live on Sky. The Yorkshire St Leger final will also be on Sky, together with supporting card, in a fortnight's time.

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Favourite for the All England after last week's heats is Wise Thought [4.2], who provided Carly Philpott with a winning return as a trainer, having once again taken her licence out.

Philpott, whose previous big-race winners included the likes of Ballymac Kewell and Fear Haribo during her partnership with Darran Keefe, had been working as assistant to Martin White at his base in Shropshire.

However, White has passed the licence over, so as to concentrate on his business interests as well as the setting up of a new owners and breeders association. He intends to give those working in the sport a bigger say in the game's corridors of power.

Wise Thought, who finished third in this year's Derby, has been earmarked by Philpott for a defence of his Eclipse title, which he won for White 11 months ago. Connections would no doubt settle for doing the All England/Eclipse double.
That said, the defending champion at Newcastle is Boherna Best, and Barrie Draper's dog returned from an Irish campaign, where he finished third in the Cork Laurels, to chase home Wise Thought in their first-round heat last week.

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Eye on the Storm heads the market at [22.0] for the 2010 Derby after his scintillating victory on the St Leger final supporting card at Wimbledon last week.
Mark Wallis's dog, who stretched his unbeaten sequence to seven, heads into the Eclipse as a strong possible for the Newcomer of the Year award at next January's GBGB Awards.

He was having his last race as a pup at Wimbledon, and had clock-watchers abuzz with a 28.48sec success.

Incidentally, the St Leger card saw the 460m track record broken by Tony Collett's Lenson Bolt, the Romford Puppy Cup and Kent Derby winner clocking 27.30sec, two spots off the mark jointly-held by Droopys Shearer and Zigzag Dutchy.
However, clock-watchers will have noted the bowser went round just before this particular race. Nevertheless, it was a very smart effort.

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Toomaline Jack [1.85], trained by Irish Derby-winning trainer Dolores Ruth, is a warm order for the Irish Grand National after Friday's semi-finals of the Harold's Cross feature saw the end of the British challenge.

However, next Friday's will feature two greyhounds owned by Steve Locke, father of Romford trainer Maxine, who has Little Boy and Love Lynx running for him.

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Boherbradda Mac, the 2008 Scurry Cup winner, really is back in the groove. Brought out of retirement, Harry Williams's dog made it four wins in five on his comeback (four in a row) with a fluent victory at Sheffield on Sunday. The card at the Owlerton venue also saw a winning return from Charlie Lister's high-class Ninja Jamie.

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Is the campaign to reopen Walthamstow Stadium about to step up a gear? Word on the street is that a group looking to access the site, with a view to making an offer for the land, are being frustrated in their efforts by owners London & Quadrant.

Get set for a new round of Ricky Holloway-led protests.