2018/19 Season Northern Awards Presented
The annual awards season has rolled around again and both the Auckland and Waikato GRC’s has recently recognised their leading track and human performers for the previous season. Pinny Mack has been declared as the 2018/19 Auckland Greyhound of the Year, while the Waikato top award was shared between the kennelmates Thrilling Talk and Sparta.
Pictured: The 2018/19 Auckland Greyhound of the Year Pinny Mack following his Group 1 Waterloo Cup victory
Steve Clark skilfully guided Pinny Mack over the Manukau 527m trip on numerous occasions during the 2018/19 season with his ultra-consistency at the venue leading to Pinny being named as the 2018/19 Auckland Greyhound of the Year. His season highlight came earlier in the season when he strongly annexed the Waterloo Cup over 527m at Group 1 level for his owners the Parker Parker syndicate. Pinny Mack also became just the third greyhound to break the Manukau 527m 30 second barrier with his 20 April 29.90s clock.
It was a clean-up for the bulk of the Auckland awards by the Te Kauwhata based training partners Jared Udy and Denise Cottam. They mentored Kiwi Boy (Dinny Syndicate – owners) to the Auckland Sprinter of the Year title. They also trained Jinja Might (Alan Christensen) to the Auckland Middle Distance of the Year award. Kiwi Boy also picked up the Auckland NZ Bred Greyhound of the Year, title, plus his 13 318m wins during the season also saw him winning the Track Star award.
Winning the Group $100,000 Duke Of Edinburgh Silver Collar over the demanding 779m journey saw Dyna Weslyn (Brendan Wheeler) claiming the Auckland Distance Greyhound of the Year title for her conditioner Craig Roberts.
The Manukau training ranks was completely dominated by the Udy and Cottam training partnership. Their 94 track training wins saw them coming out on top as the Auckland Trainers of the Year, while they also stylishly won the Auckland Strike Rate Trainer of the Year with their 0.3815 UDR figure.
The 2018/19 Auckland GRC awards saw the Jared Udy and Denise Cottam training partnership cleaning up numerous awards, they are pictured here with all of their awards and trophies, which required the Auckland GRC Chairman John Roberts having to help them out; Kiwi Boy was the dominate Manukau 318m sprinter during the Auckland 2018/19 season – he’s pictured here with Denise Cottam, while Jared Udy is also seen here with their kennel “iron dog” Alex Attack; Steve Clark was presented with the 2018/19 Auckland Greyhound of the Year trophy won by Pinny Mack by the Auckland GRC chairman John Roberts
Waikato GRC Awards
Earlier the Waikato GRC held their 2018/19 racing season awards at the Cambridge Raceway which also featured another kennel domination by this time the locally Tirau based Thrilling racing team.
The Gary and Linda Harding breeding and owing operation again enjoyed a hugely successful season with greyhounds prepared for them by Karen Walsh. Her high strike rate training efforts saw her not only taking out the Waikato Trainer of the Year title, but she also added the Waikato Strike Rate Trainer award to her national Trainer’s Strike Rate title. The Waikato Owner & Trainer award also went to local kennels with Arch Lawrence deservedly picking up that title.
On the canine side of proceedings it was the Walsh prepared Thrilling Talk and Sparta who shared the Waikato 2018/19 Greyhound of the Year title. Thrilling Talk, who won the Group 2 Waikato Classic over 457m, cemented his consistent season by also adding to his shared NZ Middle Distance Greyhound of the Year title by also winning the Waikato Middle Distance Greyhound of the Year title. Making it a hat trick of titles for him also saw being named as the Waikato NZ Bred Greyhound of the Year.
The Waikato Sprinter of the Year was awarded to the sharp short course sprinter Sparta. The only “outsider” was the Craig Roberts trained Dyna Weslyn who was named the Waikato Distance Greyhound of the Year, which he added to his Auckland and New Zealand Distance titles.
Karen Walsh made a virtual clean sweep of the Waikato 2018/19 Greyhound of the Year awards – she’s seen here with the top Waikato greyhound Thrilling Talk; she is also seen here with her leading sprinter Sparta, while the keen Waikato/Chiefs rugby supporter Arch Lawrence was named as the Waikato Owner & Trainer award winner
By Peter Fenemor
