Fear Emoski has seen her Golden Jacket odds shorten significantly with Betfair following the draw at Crayford, with Charlie Lister’s St Leger runner-up getting trap one in the second of six heats of the £17,500 annual over 714m.
The Regency and Doncaster St Leger winner will head to the Kent circuit as a rare Lister-trained runner. While previous pre-race Betfair favourites have a dismal record in the two-lap competition, Crayford racing manager Danny Rayment is well aware of the class the March 11 whelp will bring to the race.
“Fear Emoski is a fantastic bitch and trialled really well here. She did a fast 540m trial, admittedly on very slow going, handled the track well enough and has since trialled well at Nottingham. She’s rightly at the top of the market.”
It’s been an extremely promising start to the year for Fear Emoski, continuing her impressive 2013 season in which she narrowly missed out on winning the Greyhound of the Year. Farloe Tango’s incredible season saw him take the award, winning 15 of his 25 races throughout the year and dominating the odds at Betfair.com in a six-bend division in the second half of the year.
Trained by Charlie Lister for the Boys from Leicester Syndicate, the September 2010 dog was voted top Stayer having seen off fierce competition from kennelmate Fear Emoski in what was regarded as the strongest division of the year, with Farloe Tango going on to claim the main honour ahead of his fellow category winners to become the sixth Lister greyhound to claim racing’s top award following Spring Rose (1996), Some Picture (1997), Rapid Ranger (2001), Fear Zafonic (2009) and Taylors Sky (2011).