Greyhounds: Sir Duggie set for 100th race at Hatrick

It's the first meeting for the new 2019/20 racing season at Hatrick tomorrow evening after the Wanganui GRC completed an extremely busy, yet also a successful 2018/19 for the club last Wednesday.

It was a season that was completely dominated by the Palmerston North-based Lisa Cole kennels, which she completed with a staggering national record-breaking 861 winners.

Her kennels finished with the outstanding stakes figure of $2,086,365, which was just a tick over $3,000 short of the kennel's record breaking stakes earning, set during the previous season.

Tomorrow evening, one of the leading kennel contributors from last season in Sir Duggie will bring up a personal milestone in Race 5, the open class 305m sprint.

He will be loaded away into trap four for his 100th career race.

Sir Duggie will maintain an impressive winning strike rate as victory in this dash will be his 55th win (26 minor placings).

He will be warmly favoured to win this sprint, after having stylishly won the equivalent open class 305m sprint over the last three Friday evenings.

The biggest danger to him looks to be his kennelmate Bigtime Shine.

It was very successful last season for Sir Duggie and on October 19 he will be named as the 2018/19 NZ Sprinter of the Year (up to 399m) during the greyhound code's annual awards evening in Wellington.

This award is points based and Sir Duggie topped the table with his 121 points.

It was a category that was completed dominated by Cole-trained short course sprinters with kennelmates Bigtime Pete (113) and Bigtime Eve (94) finishing second and third.

Tomorrow evening's main open class 520m event is Race 9, where the Cole-prepared All About Space is poised to repeat her win in last Friday's version of this race.

She owns an abundance of early pace and she can use that asset to her advantage after she exits from trap three here.

Bigtime Rod is a proven 520m chaser at this level and he can be expected to make his presence felt from trap seven.

Going back to the points based award categories sees the Cole kennel also mentoring Bigtime Pete to win the NZ Bred Greyhound of the Year.

This section came down to the last open class sprint for the season during Monday's Palmerston North meeting, which saw Bigtime Pete snatching the title when he won the 410m sprint.

The four points gained from his win saw him overtaking his kennelmate Trojan Hoarse, finishing on 121 points compared to 119 points.