Geelong Oaks To Serve As Cup Springboard For Tully

JEFF Britton is hoping Saturday's Geelong Oaks will be a springboard to a lucrative spring for fastest heat winner Mepunga Tully.

The daughter of Fernando Bale was flawless in her heat, stepping well from box four to run 25.63. She was the only Oaks heat winner to break 26 seconds, and her time was some four lengths faster than the Derby heat winners.

"There were a lot of good dogs running around at that meeting, I thought it was pretty impressive," Britton said.

The win came at her first start since running a luckless sixth in a semi final of the Million Dollar Chase behind to boom WA sprinter Bezzecchi. Poor luck has plagued the greyhound throughout her brief career, however Britton is hopeful that luck is due to turn.

FIELDS AND FORM GEELONG SATURDAY NIGHT

"She's had a lot of issues all of the way through," he said.

"I sent her up to Tim (Britton) to go in the Ipswich Maiden, she had only been there 10 days and she got crook. A few months after that I started her back at Bendigo in the Gold Rush and she met some hot ones there. 

"So she's been stop-start. Even when she came down (owner/breeder) Barry Smith held her off a bit because she had to have a toe off just through running around in the yards. 

"But she's really good now. It showed last week, and if she can get a few under her belt she'll just get better because as I said, she's had issues along the way, so I think if she can get a good month of racing she'll just get better and better."

Despite winning two of three starts from box one, Britton said he would rather have drawn wide given her tendency to stay off the fence early in her races.  

"I probably would have preferred box eight because she uses a little bit of the track. She knows Geelong, so hopefully she goes well again,” he added.

"She's a good beginner but sometimes in the bitches races you'll get something that can really ping the lids and force her to the fence. She can't afford to make a mistake, put it that way. But if she had of drawn wide she could probably afford to make a mistake and still get around them.

"But she's got very good habits – she's a good beginner, has early pace, and she's strong as well. Even in the Maturity (in which she ran second) she was taking a bit of ground off Follow The Band in the run.

"I wouldn't say she's had a lot of experience in those sorts of races, but now I think if I can get a couple under her belt she'll be very competitive in a race like the Melbourne Cup."

With the Melbourne Cup in mind, Britton will target the final Cup Prelude series on Friday 15 November. 

Mepunga Tully is one of just three greyhounds in the kennel Britton preparing for the Cup series. 

Four-time group 1 finalist Mepunga Smokey will also head towards the final Preludes, as will recent kennel addition Sunset Frazier – a four time group race finalist with over $324,000 in prize money to his name – which arrived from David Hobby's WA kennel early last week.

"He'll probably go around on Monday night in the Silver Bullet, then I'll look to get him to Sandown for a trial, and then he'll have to go into a Prelude for the Melbourne Cup,” Britton explained. 

"But David mainly sent him for the Topgun and the Melbourne Cup, and then he'll go back after that."

The $15,000 Geelong Oaks final will be on Saturday night.