By David Lewis
WARIO, named after a character in the Super Mario franchise, topped off a big sporting week for Allendale East trainer Kev Patzel with an outstanding 22.69 seconds win in last Thursday’s Gordon Refrigeration TG5+W Stake (400 metres) at Tara Raceway.
The black dog set up the 6½ length win over Cadillac Ragtop when carving out an exceptional first split of 10.48 seconds – not much slower than that of Minnie Banjo’s 10.43 seconds recorded when she ran a still standing track record of 22.42 seconds back on February 6, 2022.
“I picked up Wario for $1000 after he had run unplaced at Sale back in April and prior to that had won three races at Dapto and Grafton,” Patzel said.
“Since then, locally he’s won three races for me, the first one when being trained by Dave (Peckham) while I was waiting for my licence to come through and one at Murray Bridge up the straight.”
By Pindari Express out of Fiery Crash, the 3½-year-old Wario headed to Horsham on Tuesday to contest a grade five stake over 410 metres.
Patzel’s other sporting love is table tennis and the Dragon Knights player figured in the game of the night at the Mount Gambier Table Tennis Club when he took on the undefeated Leigh Barry.
According to the match report, Patzel had fire in his eyes as he faced Barry, determined to finally end his opponent’s winning streak.
In the end, Patzel’s skill and determination were simply too much for Barry who finally fell and lost his undefeated status.
Meanwhile, back at the greyhounds and Patzel also had kennel newcomer Aston Reims engaged in box one in the Carlin and Gazzard TG1-4W Stake (512 m).
“Aimee Drew of Dennington had won three races with him in Mount Gambier and recently he won at Warrnambool over 450 metres,” Patzel said.
“When he was offered to me as a giveaway I figured he was probably worth having a go with.”
Aston Reims opened up a handy break mid-race but in the run home it was the Portland-based Robert Halliday owned and trained Yadillah Brave who finished the stronger to win by a length in 30.18 seconds.
A son of Raw Ability and Sea Mist, Yadillah Brave has now won three races at Tara Raceway for Halliday who has trained 18 winners this year at the local track.
Last Thursday’s time-graded meeting followed on from last month’s first Thursday of the month fixture which was graded on a best to worst basis, which was down in nominations to the extent that only 10 races were run.
However, last week held up pretty well with the program back to 12 races and greyhounds coming from places far and wide including Bendigo, Rochester, Hamilton, Coleraine, Warracknabeal, Koroit and Ararat.
The remainder of the Thursday meetings for the month are graded on a worst-to-best basis with Fast Forward features continuing to be conducted over 400 metres and 512 metres irrespective of the
number of Thursdays in the month.
