Phil Milner's Greyhound Derby Stats - Semi-finals
The last 12 lined up for the semis of the Star Sports & Orchestrate Ltd Engish Greyhound Derby on Saturday night. Phil Milner compares their third bend times.
Greyhound Derby third bend timings - semi-finals
No surprise here as the two semi-final winners were both well on top by the time they got to the third bend. The interesting thing to note is that there was a single spot between them.
With the draw on Monday, a lot of the talk ahead of the traps being selected was which way round Ballymac Deniro and Hackney Corner would be drawn as the two middle seeds.
We know now that Hackney Corner has four and Ballymac Deniro has five. Is that inside position going to be a positive for Pat Buckley's runner to keep the current favourite going the long way around?
Once more Ballymac Duffle was slow to the third bend, considerably so compared to his fellow finalists. On a track that through the Derby has so strongly favoured those that turn on the speed, can he find his break from the red box in the final?
Of course at the other end of things, Ballymac Duffle has shown the best figures coming home form the third bend. There is one thing that seems for certain, if he happened to find a ping break on the inside and went around in front, there is nothing in the final that is going to be capable of backrunning him.
What was more interesting was that the run home was massively biased towards the first semi-final with the three of those all well in front of the three that ran in the second semi.
The visual impression was that Ballymac Ralf put in a monster of a run to qualify but that is not backed up on the figures, only running home in 12.82 which goes to show the importance of having these timings available.
