Demon Bale continued his rise to stardom last night at Sandown Park with an emphatic victory.
As he’s done so well of late Demon Bale sprung out of box two to lead clearly. At that stage it was going to take an enormous effort to run him down. Demon Bale excelled away to win easily by 7 ¼ lengths in a best of night time of 29.31.
The win was Demon Bale’s 14th from his 27 career starts and increased his prize money total to $85,960.
“He pinged out – he never used to begin that well. Early in his career he was a bit hypo and played up in the boxes,” said trainer Blake Shillington.
Demon Bale is currently one of the most in-from greyhounds in the country and will take aim at group 1 glory when the Maturity series kicks off at The Meadows on July 16.
“He’ll be heading to the Maturity in a couple weeks, that’ll be his next big target.”
Shillington will be hoping for a new batch of luck as Demon Bale was narrowly beaten in last month’s Traralgon Cup.
“To be honest I thought he would have won the Traralgon Cup, he was a bit unlucky around the first bend.”
Later in the night Fearless John completed a winning double for 21-year-old Shillington. Fearless John replicated the efforts of his kennel mate by leading all the way to win in 29.74. The win was the 21st of his career and first at Sandown Park since July of 2015.
“I wasn’t sure how well he’d run the trip out as it was his first 500m for quite a while – he’s only recently come back from six months off due to injury. His owner rang me not too long ago and asked if I’d like the dog back – it was a surprise as I didn’t think he’d make it back to the track.”
Next Thursday night is highlighted by heats of the group 2 McKenna Memorial and the first night of Sandown Park’s popular Dollars for Dinner promotion.
Demon Bale wins in BON time
