A giveaway greyhound gave 73 year old Kevin Quinn his first city winner at Sandown Park on Thursday evening.
Lining up in city class for the first time in his 41 start career, Ollie was slowly away from box 2 and settled second to last four lengths adrift of the leader past the post the first time. However, as the field fanned around the first turn, the rising three year old stuck to the fence and cut the margin to two lengths down the back before switching to the outside of leader Claydon as they swung to for home and powering to a memorable victory.
It was just reward for Quinn’s patience with the brindle dog who spent his first 13 starts in maiden and tier 3 class.
“He’s been going real good for a giveaway,” said a delighted Quinn.
“He was with another trainer for a while and it didn’t work out for them so said we’ll take him. He’s a clever boy ‘Max’.”
Originally from New South Wales, Quinn had a long interest in greyhound racing before taking up the collar and lead almost two decades ago.
“I had an interest in greyhound racing along the way and we decided to find out about owning one. We went to a GOTBA meeting and met a chap there who helped us with a lot of stuff, and when the opportunity came up he said ‘why don’t you just train him yourself?’
“So that’s what we did and we’ve been in it ever since.”
Quinn actually had a winner at non-penalty level at Sandown Park in 2011, not long after his move to Victoria, but it would be almost a decade later before he returned to the Sandown Park winner’s list. So what next for the sport’s latest city winning trainer and his greyhound?
“I haven’t got a clue.
“I’ll have to now think about where he’ll go. My original thought was that we were going to give him a go at the Meadows. He’s pretty strong, he’s had a couple of goes over the 595m and he rails good. He hasn’t been around the Meadows yet so we don’t know how he’ll handle it, but he looks like a likely candidate so that’s probably where we’ll go.”
But first…
“It’s a long drive home, so he’s got a nice drink and a couple of bikkies in the car.”
Click here for full results from Thursday night’s racing.
* Paw note: Kevin Quinn is the 576th trainer to win a city race at Sandown Park since the introduction of provincial and metro meetings in April 2014.
