Coles’ clean sweep a first for NZ racing

New Zealand racing history was made at Whanganui’s Hatrick Raceway on Friday night, when trainer Lisa Cole and partner Brendon Cole’s greyhounds won all 12 races on the card — the first ever clean sweep of a meeting, whether dogs, trots or gallops.

The Palmerston North-based Cole kennels have always treated Hatrick as their home away from home, with multiple race winners and placegetters, but Friday was the apex of their domination.

It started with Big Time Angel winning the opening 305m jump at 4.28pm, through to Race 12 at 7.59pm when Bigtime Bee took victory in the final race by a length. The Coles had three races where their greyhounds claimed all three spots on the podium, and six more where they trained two of the top three.

Statistics have often been in their favour — the evening feature in Race 9 over 520m saw the Coles start seven of the eight dogs in the field, with Bigtime Rod picking up the win, while “outsider” Emgrand Park, trained by Angela Turnwald, finished third.

Wanganui GRC operations manager Paul Freeman was proud to witness the unique achievement.

“We made up a little presentation for them after the last [win],” he said.

“Because we get used to Cole winning a lot of races, I didn’t actually realise until Mark Rosanowski the commentator said ‘well, that’s 10 straight for Cole’.

“Of course, then the interest swung to watching the last two races and obviously more so the last race.”

Brendon Cole was amazed the stars aligned so well.

“There’s been a lot of meetings where we’ve trained 12 winners, but there’s often been 15 races and we may not have been in the other three. To get the entire card was something that I’ll take to my grave — it’s very special for myself and my family.”

The victory in Race 9 saw Lisa Cole move past 700 winners for the 2019-20 season — her national record of 861 winners in a season remains in sight, although Brendon Cole said the racing shutdown for the Covid19 pandemic meant their overall goal of 1000 winners is now gone.

As a family business run by the Coles, along with their five children and around eight staff members, the lockdown had been a challenging time for the kennel — having to make short-notice arrangements to maintain their food supplies and training schedules, which was costing them around $25,000 a week.

“[The greyhounds] have got to be let out twice a day, they’ve still got to have their beef and racing kibble, and that was just a fixed cost we couldn’t get around.

“It was over $150,000 in that short period that Covid was affecting the non-racing and we had no income — that was life savings all gone straight out the window.”