From the moment I started at Sandown Park there was one race that got the blood pumping more than any other.
I started at Sandown Park in 2005. I had a bit of experience in thoroughbred racing but, if I’m honest, knew little about greyhound racing other than the fact that eight dogs run fast around the track. Except for one race that is that, where four dogs run really fast around the track.
The Shootout is often billed as ‘the speed championship of Australia.’ The concept is simple – with just four dogs in the field, there’s less chance for interference which gives those dogs that lack speed at box rise time to steady, find their stride and show what they can do. Four of the fastest canines in the land racing head to head. Oh, and the winner gets the prize. All of it. It’s the only race I’m aware of any code where the winner takes the entire purse.
The Shootout started back in 1998 as a paid entry race. If you thought you had the fastest chaser in the country and you were prepared to stump up $5000, you could prove to everyone you’re right. In that first year, just three sets of connections forked out the entry fee with the brilliant WA sprinter Reggimite claiming the $40,000 prize.
Whisky Assassin won the Shootout in 2004 and people around the club were still talking about the race when I started in March the following year. So naturally it was a race that I was keenly looking forward to later that year, and it didn’t disappoint! The connections of Bond, a greyhound that had burst onto the scene almost 12 months earlier running scintillating times around NSW, put up the entry fee despite their charge only having the one start in the preceding four months – a well beaten fifth at Wentworth Park.
There was plenty of support by punters for the big 36kg black dog, and it was well founded. As is typical of the winner of the race, Bond took a few strides to balance up and then exploded to the lead, extending his advantage at every post to stop the clock in 29.38 – a new track record. The buzz around the big crowd that night had me hooked. Not just on the race, but the sport. It was as exciting a moment as you’d see on a race track and I’m sure any newcomer to greyhound racing that was there that night left a convert to the sport. The crowd was already abuzz as the field headed to the boxes, escorted by the cow girl promotional girls to the sound track of ‘The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.’ Sure it was a bit gimmicky, but it was fun, exciting, and different to anything the sport offered anywhere else.
Not everyone is a fan of the Shootout. The detractors – and there have been many over the years – say that it’s not real racing, it’s just a gimmick and not to be taken too seriously. A bit like Test cricket and its gimmicky, not too serious and ‘not real cricket’ offshoot, T20. But while cricket traditionalists have been slow to embrace the short form of cricket, the players have and are making a lot of money from it because the public loves it. It’s been the same in a similar sense with the Shootout. The ‘traditionalist’ may deride it, but every male winner has gone to stud and most have the Shootout win as one of its key selling points. And who doesn’t want to see what the fastest dogs in the country can do with a clear run?
The format has also been embraced in other parts of the world. The Brisbane Greyhound racing Club now runs its popular four-dog ‘Super Stayers’ event as part of the winter carnival. A Shootout was briefly run in New Zealand, and in 2018 the first English Shootout will be run at the Towcester track. Hype follows the format wherever it goes.
The conditions of the race have changed over the last 20 years. There is no longer an entry fee. Prize money has been as high as $75,000. It’s been graded everything from a special event up to a group 2. It was a lead into the Melbourne Carnival and now headlines our New Years Day meeting. And throughout the changes, interest in the race remains strong with news around the Shootout among our most engaging content through the club’s digital and social channels.
No matter what guise the race has taken, there is one fundamental that remains unchanged – the country’s four fastest chasers racing for a winner-takes-all prize. With one eye on the clock to see just how fast they canine super stars can run. Some of the sport’s most prominent chasers appear on the Shootout honour roll, including Go Wild Teddy, Bombastic Shiraz, Mantra Lad, Xylia Allen and Zambora Brockie, and on New Years Day and greyhound superstar will join the great names to take the winner takes all prize.
My tip? It’s hard to go past Aston Dee Bee, the most in form chaser in the country right now and at around 4.52pm on New Years Day, can lay claim to being the fastest in the land.
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