Blonde Fletch back to his best ready for semi-final assault

BIG CHANCE: Mark Wallis, with Blonde Fletch, left, who will be aiming to book his place in the semi-final of the williamhill.com St Leger on Saturday

Published on 09/11/2012 09:00

Three-times champion greyhound trainer Mark Wallis believes veteran stayer Blonde Fletch has an excellent chance of reaching the semi-finals of the williamhill.com St Leger at Wimbledon on Saturday.

Having been sidelined with a minor tendon injury, the former williamhill.com Grand Prix winner bounced back to his best to take the final opening round heat of the Category One competition at the South London track by one-and-three-quarter lengths.

Despite Blonde Fletch being handed an awkward draw in trap four for the third of the quarter-finals ,Lakenheath handler Wallis remains very hopeful about his chances.

“The draw in trap four is not ideal for Blonde Fletch, but he is likely to go off favourite for his race on Saturday as he has the weakest-looking draw on paper,” said Wallis.

“Considering he had a rushed preparation for the event, he ran very well, and the break probably helped him as he runs well fresh.

“If he breaks like he did at the weekend he has a great chance.”

The two-times Greyhound Derby winner trainer has, however, warned that recent Ladbrokes TV Trophy winner Blonde Reagan has it all to do if he is to keep alive his chances of more top level glory, despite running out an easy seven-length winner in the first round of the 687m competition.

“Blonde Reagan did well to win by seven lengths on Saturday, but he has a hard draw on Saturday night up against ante-post favourite Droopys Robels and will have to be at his best,” said Wallis.

The Imperial Kennels handler will be triple-handed in the event after Ballintine Molly crept into the next round when finishing third behind Bubbly Swallow in heat five of the opening round.

“Ballintine Molly stayed on really well on Saturday and, although she has a bit to find, is not totally out of it and could be a lively outsider,” continued Wallis.

Sport

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Blonde Fletch back to his best ready for semi-final assault

Top stories

Sport