Cambridge to cough up Christmas treats

An outbreak of kennel cough has affected the traditional Cambridge Christmas Eve greyhound meeting but there are still a couple of treats in store for punters.

Today was planned to be a day of heats for a Premier Waikato Classic meeting on New Year’s Eve but that has all been postponed by two weeks due to several kennels being sidelined with kennel cough.

However, a slick field of Class 5 sprinters lines up in race eight over 375m at 2.30pm.

The clear top pick is one of the best beginners in the business, Big Time Brie, who jumps from box five.

Big Time Brie has won 20 times from her 40 starts with nearly all of her wins coming courtesy of her blistering early speed.

So if you’re on her today you will want to see a flash of gold shooting to the front on box rise. This is something that she has done before, with a remarkable seven wins from nine starts out of the squeeze box.

Better known over middle distance, Big Time Brie took on the country’s best sprinters in the heats of the Dash for Cash in late November and set the fastest time of the night, flying to front and dashing away to win by more than seven lengths. And while some sprinters can struggle at the end of the long Cambridge straight, Brie’s middle distance pedigree will have no issues.

The top class middle distance greyhounds go around in the last race of the day and local hope Bailey’s Nice looks a great each-way chance to end the day.

Bailey’s Nice has drawn perfectly in box one and comes up against a field not known for their early speed and so he should settle right on the pace, if not actually take up the lead himself. As a dog best known for how strong he is late, he will take a lot of beating once that close to the front.

The strongly-built son of Barcia Bale weighs in just under 37kg, making him the biggest dog at the meeting and giving him the size to brush bad luck out of the way. He also won at his last two attempts wearing the red rug of box one, as well as being a winner over 600m, so he will be very strong at the business end today.