Craig Dawson’s Target lands Classic at Sunderland
Trainer Craig Dawson celebrated success at Sunderland last night as Target Classic won the £25,000 williamhill.com Classic final live on Sky Sports.
Classic (7-2) blitzed out of trap five on the 450m track. He was threatened by Romeo Reason (7-1) who was first to show but could not quite match the pace of the strong black.
Ballymac Ace was next to step into the equation as a possible threat. The Chris Allsopp-trained charge used all his reserves to try catch Classic but missed out by one spot (0.01sec) as Classic clocked 26.94sec.
Classic’s last attempts in claiming a category-one competition was at Shawfield for the bettor.com Scottish Derby - but failed as he could not progress past the first round.
It is truly a fantastic achievement for the Hawick-based trainer who had only got his license granted back in February to pull off a result from a greyhound that’s only run nine races this year and also returned after almost a three month break.
“It’s brilliant, just brilliant. I thought we’d been picked up on the line,” said the stunned Dawson afterwards.
Classic will now get the opportunity to claim an added bonus of £25,000 if successful in the All England Cup later this year, a competition which has a winner’s prize of £10,000 up for grabs and will be held at Newcastle.
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