Rob Britton will unveil American import He’s Hell Bent in Race 9 at The Meadows tonight.
He’s Hell Bent turns 3-years-old tomorrow and produced 12 wins from 31 starts in the US.
He arrived in Australia in April but hasn’t raced yet due to cumbersome administration processes.
“He was due to fly here in October. The import permit takes three months to come back and then there were delays with quarantine,” said Britton.
His record in the US is strong but he’s been disappointing since arriving in Australia.
“He performed well at Wheeling Island, he got to AA class which is the equivalent of Free-For-All over here. But he’s not running 500 metres well enough.”
Through Britton’s past experiences with importing American bred greyhounds he has a strong understanding of how the best in the US are likely to stack up in Australia.
“In the past dogs that have run 29.80 there (Wheeling Island) would run 29.40 or 29.50 at Sandown. He was running 29.50 over there, but here not setting the times he should be.”
His lack of performance to date has been confusing for Britton. He suggested a possible reason being the climates in each country.
“His coat isn’t as good as it was over there. He’s coming from their winter into our winter, the coat would normally shed post-winter into summer. I can’t explain it, whether that impacts his performance I don’t know.”
The only exposed Australian form of He’s Hell Bent was in a satisfactory trial at Sandown Park last Monday. He was beaten convincingly by House Of Turbo who features in a heat of the Nationals on Thursday.
“His form stacks up in general, but he’s let us down at this stage and not running out 500 metres as well as we expected.”
The experiment is something Britton has done a number of times over the years. Most notably a greyhound named Lucy Wires who was born in the US but did all of her racing in Australia and was a Group class stayer.
Race 9 at The Meadows tonight will jump at 9.27pm.
