Renegade Chief Wins Silver Chief For Lockett & Greenough
The Kel Greenough-trained Renegade Chief has taken out the country's first Group race of 2013 with a barnstorming win in the Group 1 Silver Chief at The Meadows over 525 metres.
The son of Bombastic Shiraz and Teeze jumped well off his favourable draw of two, sitting behind tearaway leader Allen Makoto, who carved out super splits of 5.00 and 17.72.
Turning for home, Renegade Chief showed his superior strength, powering away to a one and three quarter length win over the early leader in 29.89, with Gold Town finishing third.
Favourite Proven Nitro ($2.60) finished seventh after missing the start and then finding bother.
The victory was Renegade Chief's 13th win from just 19 starts, continuing the impressive stat of not missing a top-three finish in any of his fabulous career starts to date. The Group 1 success pushed his prizemoney to $155,525 for former AFL star and owner Tony Lockett.
Trainer Kel Greenough was not expecting the win despite the greyhound's amazing record to date. “This is such an amazing thrill. I didn't think we could win the race tonight but he has proven us wrong.”
“I'd like to thank Tony Lockett (who is in America) for letting me train this dog. I was at Tony's place about 18 months ago and the dog was limping in the rearing yard, so Tony let me have a look at him and after kennelling his injury cleared, so Tony was nice enough to let me train the dog.”
“I would also like to thank my wife Jacqui and daughter Angela for all their hard work with the greyhounds, it was certainly a team effort tonight.”
Renegade Chief will now be one of the leading contenders during the 2013 Australian Cup Carnival, with prizemoney pushing well over $1 million over the world's best three-week greyhound carnival.