Arizona: Andrews Postcard and Coldwater Torres Continue Win at Phoenix Greyhound Park

It's too hot during the day out in Arizona for Phoenix Greyhound Park to run matinee performances, so all of their racing is done at night. However, some of their runners are scorching the track once the sun goes down, especially the top grade sprinters. Phoenix Greyhound Park boasts some standout 5/16ths of a milers, with such greats as Coldwater Torres, Andrews Postcard, the veteran Savvy Noni, and Sierra Dawn in action these past few nights, all of them landing in the winner's circle. And when Coldwater Milton won his contest on Saturday evening, a very nice payoff was the end result.

On August 7th Andrews Postcard went to work from the three hole in an event that included such Phoenix stalwarts as Activist and Kay Peyote Pearl. Postcard was coming off a loss that had stopped a modest three race win skein, and was looking to right his ship. The winner of twenty-seven races lifetime at Phoenix, Postcard, two-and-a-half years old, went to the turn trailing Savvy's Disco and AK's Great Gig, but he turned it on down the stretch to pull out the victory, by almost three lengths in 30.75 seconds. The win gave Postcard his seventeenth of the calendar year, as the black son of Cholla Chuck has earned over sixteen grand for his proud owners.

Bella Ionic was almost unbeatable at Tucson Greyhound Park, so a trip to Phoenix to run for higher purses made sense back in December. Through the first three months of 2007, Ionic hit the pay sheet but seldom won, as the gap in talent between the two Arizona dog tracks was apparent. However, after a ten week layoff, Ionic has returned to become one of Phoenix's better Grade As. On August 8th the brindle bitch won by five in 30.30 seconds, her third win in seven outings since the end of June. An April 2005 daughter of Jimbo Scotty, Ionic has lots of races at Phoenix in front of her, and she has the chance to get even better.

It would be hard to imagine any greyhound in the entire nation running better than Coldwater Torres. On Friday the 10th, Torres won his twenty-eighth of the season in thirty-two attempts, as perhaps only Flagler's Kiowa Willowwisp has been more dominating in 2007. Possessing incredible box speed and an overwhelming rush to the first turn, Torres cannot be beaten cleanly to the corner unless he has trouble early. Such was not the case in his latest outing, as the fawn male, who will turn three in November, won for the fifty-fifth time in seventy Phoenix Greyhound Park starts, going wire to wire in 30.52 seconds.

For almost two years, the brindle female Savvy Noni has been going to post at Phoenix and doing battle with the track's best. Noni has come out on top in thirty-three of those heats, the latest by almost ten lengths in 30.36 seconds. Noni broke from the two hole and never looked back, recording her thirteenth win of the meet. Noni had been off for a brief rest and looked quite refreshed upon her return, as she won for the first time in two and a half months. On the same card, Sierra Dawn won again, as she is always more than capable of taking any tilt she is entered in. Dawn managed to get up at the wire for her eighth victory of the year in an exciting duel with Phoenix Dynamite, who has been giving some of the facility's best all they can handle lately, with little to show for it.

Coldwater Milton returned to Grade AA when he won the eighth race, heading a superfecta that paid over three thousand dollars. Milton caught the aforementioned AK's Great Gig, who has been winless since mid-June when he won three in a row. However, since that time, Gig has given back some big leads, and on this night he went to the front only to run fifth. Milton, who wins his A race with regularity whenever he drops down a grade from AA, took advantage of the tiring Gig to win, followed by long shots RD's Union and Bella BW Rainbow. The 4-5-7-1 combination formed a $125 quiniela and a $1,700 triple, but the super was the big prize that only a couple of bettors took home.