The influence of Australian sires in UK and Irish Greyhound Racing
Floyd Amphlett takes a look over some of the most important greyhound racing breeding lines from Australia that have blessed the UK and Ireland down the years.
SIRES LINES – THE AUSTRALIAN INFLUENCE
In the preceding 30 years there had been various attempts to introduce Australian breeding to the European racing scene with substandard stud dogs like Roman Copy and Matthews World, writes Floyd Amphlett.
It wasn’t until the arrive of Frightful Flash a little over 30 years ago, that the Aussie invasion really got underway.
Flash’s success, followed by Top Honcho, resulted in advances in the use of frozen semen meaning that it became infinitely easier to share the world’s top bloodlines.
The influence of the Australian imports on British/Irish breeding is now so complete that European lines do not exist in isolation.
The graphic below is an attempt to show how extensive that influence has been - but it can only do so with certain limitations.
The main one will be obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of Aussie bloodlines.
For ease of viewing, we have tried to represent six different sire lines with Roanokee the only one who was actually imported into Ireland.
However, these lines are all connected within the previous few generations. For example, Pretty Short and Eaglehawk Star are both sons of Tangaloa. Brett Lee and Head Honcho are both grandsons of Brother Fox.
And so it goes on.
To produce a graphic showing several more layers of connections would have made for dizzying viewing.
As for the current Aussie champion sires, you’ll find them in next week’s graphics under ‘USA Influence’.
