Why Black Comanche Could Be Stella's Best Yet

BOOM youngster Black Comanche goes into Saturday night's semi-finals of the Group 3 Vince Curry Maiden series (520m) at Ipswich with confident connections despite his box five draw.

The son of Zambora Brockie and group placed bitch Tahlia's Way is owned by Peter Hare and trained by Greg Stella.

He missed the start in his race debut, a heat of the Vince Curry last weekend but still ploughed through the wet track to win in a flying 30.54.

Litigate, off box one and on a dry track, ran the best of the heats in 30.32.

FIELDS AND FORM IPSWICH SATURDAY NIGHT

All of greyhound racing knew the ability of Black Comanche before he went into the heats last week.

He had been trialling sensationally in the lead-up to the series.

“He went 24.70 first look at Ipswich, then went 30.29 there over the 500, 19.62 up Capalaba and has gone box to box at Albion Park in 17.05,” said Peter Hare.

“Greg (Stella) says he is the best young dog he has trained and could be the best ever.”

Stella is a noted form student and Hare says his trainer is supremely confident of the dog's chances in the semi-final.

“Greg told me the dog has lengths on those against him on Saturday night,” said Peter.

But Stella himself admits there is a chink in the dog's armour which has only developed in recent weeks.

“He came out moderately in the heat and that happened in a couple of trials just lately,” he said. “But I have seen him absolutely fly the lids so let's hope he is ready to do that again.”

Black Comanche has been running Free For All times from the moment he was put into training.

“I got him at about 15 months after he had been educated,” said Greg. “He did some pre-training and then went to Ipswich to run 24.70 first time over 431 metres.”

The day Black Comanche trialled 19.62 at Capalaba, at only his second trial on the track, the next best run that day was 20.20.

Stella has only four dogs in training and recently whelped a litter of Bernardo-Regal Topaz pups he has decided not to sell.

“We have not bred a litter here for some years so we are looking forward to rearing these pups,” said Greg.