Racing: Top performances tipped as local stars go up against southerners in gruelling Silver Collar

Photo / Brett Phibbs

The Commercial Plumbing Duke Of Edinburgh Silver Collar is an absolute tough, uncompromising 779m endurance test for the staying greyhounds.

Uncompromising simply because the eight canine endurance athletes racing in tomorrow's $80,000 contest are backing up at the Manukau Stadium again from last Sunday's qualifying rounds.

The Silver Collar was donated to the Auckland club by Prince Philip after the 1970 royal tour of New Zealand after he was given a greyhound by the Auckland committee.

Since then the race has gone on to be the most keenly contested event on the national greyhound calendar, with some truly exceptional performances having being delivered over the past 40 years.

Tomorrow's edition promises to be no different. Swift Fantasy was simply sublime in the manner she handed her opposition a massive head start in her heat, before powerfully unleashing when slicing her way through that field to deliver her remarkable 46.38sec heat victory.

That is her racing style and she will attempt to replicate that performance tomorrow as her Albany trainer Steve Clark confirms.

"She will adopt exactly the same race pattern in the final - last with a lap to go and making contact with the field with around 320m to go. There's nothing I can do to change her racing style," he advised, while adding, "I have no worries about her backing up - I couldn't be happier with her."

Drury trainer Ben Craik is hoping for a repeat of the completely opposite outlandish gallop that his charge, local favourite Rasmah, delivered in his heat.

He defied his opponents to run him down on that occasion. They couldn't as he ground that field into submission when he skimmed over the sand and loam surface in a stunning 46.16secs, which was just 0.01 of a second outside the 779m track record.

"He's very well, thoroughly hard and fit. I'm hoping he finds the early lead and then will look for him to put on just as big a break on the field as what Swift Fantasy is giving them at the back end.

"That will make it rather interesting," suggested Craik.

Three Canterbury-trained stayers will be doing everything they can to deprive the local stars of a victory in the great race.

First, the Dave and Jean Fahey-trained Sand Burner and Let's Debate duo will have derived benefit after their first outings on the Manukau track last Sunday.

"Both have come through their heats pretty good. Hopefully Sand Burner can jump a bit better and the wide draw [eight] that Let's Debate has can see him lobbing somewhere near the early pace," said Dave Fahey.

And the doyen of greyhound trainers, 75-year-old Ray Adcock, is setting out to rectify a glaring omission in his stellar training career, with the great race being the only major he has yet to annex.

Adcock lines up last year's runner-up Sudden Sam.

"He will deliver an honest race," Adcock said. "Although he doesn't have the dash or glamour of some of the others, I expect him to be thereabouts at the business end."