Orange Park Derby Goes to Longshot SE's Top Speed

SE's Top Speed had run in plenty of 3/8ths races at Jacksonville's Orange Park Kennel Club, having never been caught when she made it to the front of the race. That same pattern held true, but barely, on Saturday, Feb. 2, when SE's Top Speed galloped off to the lead and just held on in the $50,000 Orange Park Derby, one of the biggest greyhound races of the year at that Florida dog track.

Top Speed was lightly regarded in this field, going off at 10-1 odds from the 5 hole, and was given as much of a chance of winning as Punxatawny Phil would have been on this Ground Hog's Day evening.. The biggest surprise about this race was who wasn't in it, as pre-stakes favorite Santa's Playgirl failed to garner enough points during the elimination rounds and was unceremoniously bounced from the competition. This left the outcome of the final wide open, with the strong closing Penny Candy going off at 5-2 odds and the veteran Deco Deano at 7-2, along with the improving Grim Reaper. That trio was expected to vie for the Orange Park Derby crown, and indeed all 3 did at one point or another in this race, each managing to do everything but get by SE's Top Speed.

Top Speed, a 3 ½ year old brindle bitch out of Teamster, has fluctuated back and forth from the 550 yard sprints to the 660 yard routes since her debut on the tough Jacksonville circuit in November of 2006. In the qualifying rounds, she ran last in Round One, but came storming back to post a win, a second, and a third in the next 3 to gain a finals' berth. When the box opened for the Orange Park Derby, Deco Deano broke on top and seemed to be steaming to the lead, the only dog in the race that had made the finals of it in 2007. Top Speed however had other plans and quickly zipped by Deano on the inside through the escape turn and established a lead, with Deano unable to keep pace and fading back to his eventual fifth place finish.

Meanwhile, Grim Reaper had taken up the chase, driving on the inside and pressuring Top Speed through the first turn and down the backstretch. The 2 year old son of Snow Bow was making only his sixth start on the 660 yards after a fine sprinting debut at Orange Park, and he soon will be a handful on this distance. But when he tried to pass Top Speed heading into the far turn, she responded as if death was actually on her heels, blocking Grim Reaper and shuffling him off into seventh.

The race was far from over however, as now the strong and more than capable Penny Candy had gotten loose, weaving her way through the pack and into second. The gap between this 2 year old black female who had recently shipped in from Wichita Greyhound Park was 4 lengths heading for home, and she was able to erase all but a head of it before the photo-finish camera snapped the pair's picture crossing the finish line. The image showed that SE's Top Speed had held on, running a 37.73 second time for the 660 yards. Penny Candy was second, with the furious late speed of Kiowa Pretence, a greyhound who never met a race she couldn't go last to the turn in, bringing her from the back of things all the way up to third by 4.

The 10-1 Top Speed combined with the favored Penny Candy to form a $34 quiniela, but the exacta came back $200 richer than that. The triple paid $546 and the superfecta returned a handsome $1,400, with 18-1 longshot USS California completing the 5-3-4-2 ticket. As for Santa's Playgirl, she went out and won her next 2 routes in easy fashion, by a combined 10 lengths, with a 37.14 in her last outing, leaving her handlers and fans wondering about what could have been.

Sources:

http://www.jaxkennel.com/featureraces.asp