Australia's best stayer Palawa King will return to racing this Saturday night at The Meadows in the G1 Zoom Top - with next month's $125,000 to the winner Country Classic at Dubbo his long term mission.
Image: Watch Dog Racing
Heats will be held at several country venues from February 26 to March 2 with semi-finals over 605m at Dubbo on March 9 and the final of the world's richest middle distance race at that Dawson Park circuit a week later.
Palawa King, who won the 710m Queensland Cup and 715m National Distance Championship group one double last year, has not raced since December 27.
His Forbes-based trainer Jack Smith said: "He has been sidelined with a couple of little niggling problems, nothing serious.
"I am planning to have Palawa King in the Country Classic heats along with his kennelmates Red Hot Frankie and Bella Una.''
Palawa King - 2023 National Distance Champion | Photo: Jason McKeown
Less than a month after crack Dapto trainer Simon Rhodes called time on his career, successful Hunter Valley conditioner Michelle Frankland-Shambler has announced her retirement from the sport.
Shambler, who trained her first winner as a 13-year-old, said: "I'm now 59 and have been around greyhounds since I was four or five.
"But my two daughters, a 21-year-old and the other rising 19, are entering university and I need to be more available for them.
"I trained my first winner, a giveaway, as a little kid and was only 13 when I trained a dog called Raybob's Rebel, who gave me a tremendous thrill by reaching the final of a race at Harold Park.
Michelle Frankland-Shambler has announced her retirement.
"Best short course greyhound I have trained was Fury Queen, who was a track record holder and was a star on the old Beaumont Park track at Newcastle.
"Melissa's Pride is the best stayer I have had in my kennel.
"She had 10 wins and eight placings from just 33 races during 2016 and 2017.
"More recently I trained Kingsbrae Demon for the Northfield family from the NSW Northern Rivers, and he was a fast dog who reached the state final of the National Sprint Championship last year and won three from six starts at Wentworth Park.
"The Northfields didn't want me to quit the sport, saying they wanted to send more greyhounds to me to train, but my mind is made up and I'm finished after more than 50 years.''
Kingsbrae Demon winning at Wentworth Park.
The Kevin Sills-trained Mr Munro makes his debut at Gunnedah on Thursday and if he is half as capable as his namesake he will be a top grader.
The dog is named Johnny Munro, who was inducted as a living legend of the sport in a ceremony at The Gardens in 2015.
Munro, widely known for his role not only as a greyhound muscle manipulator but also for his expertise in massaging injured people, was once the subject of a sold-out "This Is Your Life" style presentation at a packed Kurri Kurri Workers Club.
That function was organised as a collective "community thank you" to Munro, who has never charged his human clients for his services.
At that event in the late 1990s, the then chief orthopaedic surgeon of Newcastle's John Hunter Hospital declared: "I can't explain the wonderful post operative care Johnny Munro has given so many of my patients, but he truly has magic in his hands.''
Also paying tribute to Munro's skills as a chiropractor/physiotherapist at that function were the Newcastle Knights first grade rugby league team, headed by Paul Harragon.
Munro's other "patients" have included champion jockey Robert Thompson, who retired in 2021 after riding an Australian record 4,477 winners, world champion woodchopper David Foster, former Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh and world superbike champion Casey Stoner.
As a trainer, Johnny Munro prepared the Cessnock record holder Chadford, who became a top grade sprinter at Harold Park and who Munro and his wife Barbara acknowledged by naming their Hunter Valley property Chadford Lodge.
