“Buln Buln East Bullet” Paua Of Buddy became the first greyhound to officially go under the magical 22-second barrier over 400 metres at Warragul last night.
Trained by Steve White, Paua Of Buddy ($1.20F) led all the way from box eight to score by a massive 11.14 lengths and establish a spellbinding new track record – 21.999sec.
Ironically, he shaved around one length off the previous mark – 22.073sec – jointly held by his older half-brother and kennelmate Paua Of Oscar (March 24, 2020) and former star Aston Bolero (August 30, 2016).
“I thought he’d go close to breaking the track record based on his last couple of trials,” an elated White said.
“The conditions suited as there’d been plenty of sun during the day and not much wind about. Really, it was just a matter of a clean getaway.
“But even before his first start, he’d trialled 22.11sec and 22.12sec.”
The 29-month-old Paua Of Buddy (Apr ’19 Aston Dee Bee x Paua To Admit) notched his sixth win from nine starts, including three of his past four. Incredibly, four of his wins have been in fast times over Warragul’s 460m trip – 25.49sec, 25.54sec, 25.63sec and 25.69sec.
For the record, it took only four starts for Paua Of Oscar (Nov ’17 My Bro Fabio x Paua To Admit), then 28 months old, to join Aston Bolero as the joint track record holder.
WATCH: Paua Of Buddy (8) clocks a scintillating new 400m track record – (21.999sec – at Warragul last night.
Aston Bolero – a five-time G1 finalist, including runner-up in the 2016 Topgun – broke the record at his 54th start. He went on to win 53 races from 91 starts and $399,315 in prizemoney.
When I asked White to ‘compare the pair’, he said: “There’s nothing between them, but ‘Buddy’ is a bit stronger and much sounder. However, ‘Oscar’ had toe issues even before he equalled the record.”
White also explained why the lightly raced Paua Of Buddy had a relatively late start to his career at two years of age.
“Paua Of Buddy had a shoulder problem. He did it in the catching pen in a trial at Wagga when he was only 19 months old.”
And White also revealed why Paua Of Buddy was scratched from last month’s G3 Warragul St Leger final.
“He always gives 120% and ‘busted his guts’ chasing Qwara Bale in a heat. Subsequently, it took him a while to recover.”
White says his long-range plan with Paua Of Buddy is the G1 Melbourne Cup (November) or Hobart Thousand (December).
“But in the interim, we may go to next month’s G2 Bendigo Cup,” he added.
Paua Of Buddy’s littermates include the highly promising Paua Of Janie (6 from 9) and Paua Of Mindy (3 from 10).
White also informed that 2020 G3 Healesville Cup runner-up Paua Of Oscar, who hasn’t started since clocking a 22.64sec win at Warragul on June 22, was around three weeks off resuming.
Paua Of Oscar, a winner of 16 races from 31 starts, has been recovering from a torn monkey muscle.
