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Bill Kingston: doyen of greyhound racing

Magic command, New Zealand’s greatest ever stakes-winning greyhound, on June 6 will defend the South Island championship crown which has been his for the last two years.

For Bill Kingston, who bred the canine-racing sensation, it will be another high point in his illustrious list of achievements if Magic Command achieves the hat-trick in the $6OOO race at Queen Elizabeth II Park.

Seventy-seven-year-old Bill Kingston’s exploits in greyhound racing have helped it become fully established as the third racing code in New Zealand. In 1941 he first went with his father-in-law to watch greyhounds pursuing a live hare across a paddock — a form of racing known as coursing. Since that year he has never been without one of the breed.

“When I first went coursing there were only about five owners in the whole of Christchurch,” Mr Kingston remembers fondly, surrounded by scrapbooks at his Highsted Road residence in Bishopdale where he has lived for the last 36 years. “It wasn’t long before I was on the committee of the local coursing club right up to 1954 when the practice was banished, mainly as a result of the urgings of Mabel Howard, the well known member of Parliament,” he reflects.

Miss Howard, the M.P. for Sydenham, was in the van of a campaign by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The aim was to outlaw bloodsports — a category which included coursing. Live bird shoots and gundog trials were also targets as petitions were signed the length of New Zealand. When coursing ceased in Waterloo Road, Sockburn, Bill Kingston was the leading trainer and a dog of his won the last event staged there. Before that, though, almost a decade before coursing was wound up, the Christchurch Greyhound Racing Club had been formed and Bill Kingston sat on the first committee of that body. Two years later, in 1947, the club presented its premier tinbare meeting at Athletic Park, Ferry Road. The day of the artificial lure in Canterbury had dawned.

In the period before the Christchurch G.R.C. established its present home at Queen Elizabeth II Park, Mr Kingston and the greyhound pioneers experienced racing at Sockburn, Wainoni, Athletic Park and Marshlands. It was in the 1940 s that Mr Kingston significantly shaped the future for greyhound racing in the South Island. He set out to buy a North Island broodbitch to bring some of the breed’s finest blood back home. Incredibly, he was able to buy Dresden China for a meagre £5. "They sold me their best broodbitch!” Bill exclaims. “She came to Papanui by rail and made an instant impact. She made a 100 per cent improvement to racing in Christchurch.” He was quick to mate Dresden China with one of his own dogs, Harewood Lad, a combination which produced Recreation, the winner of the most famous of coursing events, the Waterloo Cup, in 1947. During the next few years

Dresden China was dominant as a broodbitch. She was the dam of Royal Shot which became the first South Island greyhound to race in the North Island in 1949. .

Bill Kingston proudly recalls that occasion. “The northern dogs had more class than ours back in those days, but Royal Shot shocked them by winning the Wellington championship and equalling the track record at his first attempt. He had never been on a lure or a track with a bend in it either.”

Royal Shot sired Imperial Shot which Bill Kingston sold to Australian interests, and in 1952 Imperial Shot became' the first New Zealand-bred greyhound to win at Sydney’s top track, Wentworth Park.

Although the veteran trainer has had many quality longtails in his care, he rates Tredeka Lass, the dam of Magic Command, as the greatest. She won the New Zealand championship at Christchurch in successive seasons, 1980 and 1981, earning about $lO,OOO throughout her racing career. In more recent years two New Zealand championships netted the owner more than $15,000.

Tredeka Lass has become a broodbitch of champion status following her retirement from the track. She has won the Canterbury Dam of the Year title for the last two years and, last season, through the race winning efforts of Magic Command and numerous others of her progeny, she was pipped by just one point for the national dam award. Her success as a matron is no fluke. In the early 1970 s Bill Kingston purchased a pup he later named Tip Top. She was the maternal grand-dam of Tredeka Lass. He bought her because she had the finest Australian blood on both sides of her pedigree. Such is the respect with which Mr Kingston is held that the remaining 10 pups in Tip Top’s litter were sold within a week of his purchasing her. The bitch won the 1974 South Island championship and produced Bishopdale Lass which Bill also kept and raced himself. He mated her with a sire imported from Australia, No Pardons, and in April, 1979, Tredeka Lass was born. As a dam she mothered five litters of pups; from the second of those Magic Command was produced by the champion South Island

sire, Club’s Colours.

Magic Command was bought as a youngster by Ron and Rosemary Blackburn who train the dog at their Woolston property. Labelled as the greatest greyhound to have ever raced in New Zealand he has won 50 races and almost $50,000 in stake money. Bill Kingston earns bonus money for being the breeder of Magic Command when he wins feature races. Mr Kingston’s breeding feats throughout the years have included two Waterloo Cup winners, four New Zealand championship wins, one Derby, two Oaks, and one dead-heat in the St Leger. An exotic touch to that collection out of Tip Top is that Bill Kingston also bred Jody Majestic which raced in the Netherlands and was placed third in the Dutch championship. Mr Kingston still has Tredeka Lass, and now three of her pups from her last litter which are nearly ready to go to the track. "They’ll be the last to race for me,” he says. Not that the Kingston name will be lost to greyhound racing as Bill is the current patron of the Christchurch Greyhound

Racing Club and his two sons, Gordon and Ray, followed in their father’s footsteps from an early age. Gordon, the elder of the two, is the president of the New Zealand

Greyhound Racing Association and full-time secretary of the Christchurch club.

Ray has also served in administrative positions, and like his brother, has imported stud dogs from Australia. He continues to breed, train and race greyhounds, and stands Club’s Colours at stud in Rangiora.

But it is Bill who is the grandmaster of the sport and who has seen radical changes in his chosen hobby during 50 years of devotion.

“Sure, it was more fun in the early days when there was no money in it, but the sport has moved with the times and I’m happy with its direction,” he says.

One can be sure there will be a spring in the veteran’s step as he makes his way to the V.I.P. room at Queen Elizabeth II Park for a celebratory drink if Magic Command wins yet again the South Island championship on June 6.

MARK ROSANOWSKI talks with a breeder of greyhounds for nearly half a century, who raced dogs in the era of the live hare and carried on when the electrically operated artificial lure became the substitute. The latter, on a rail inside the perimeter fence of the track, draws the dogs into speeds of 70km/h as they enter bends.

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19890601.2.98.1

Bibliographic details

Press, 1 June 1989, Page 17

Word Count
1,270

Bill Kingston: doyen of greyhound racing Press, 1 June 1989, Page 17

Bill Kingston: doyen of greyhound racing Press, 1 June 1989, Page 17

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