By Sean Nolan
Everybody wants to own a Derby winner, but if you want to do it affordably, the only way is with a syndicate.
So says Aileen Lennon, one of the members of the Glamour Paws Syndicate, a group that came very close to achieving that dream with Scolari Me Daddy and they hope they have another potential champion in waiting.
Glamour Paws Syndicate is a group of nine women who got together to share the ownership and cost of owning a greyhound. Aileen says nobody is in greyhound ownership for the money but the enjoyment they get is all about the social life and the meetings they have both on and off the track.
While Aileen would like to say that the selection of Scolari Me Daddy at eight weeks’ old was a scientific process, she confesses that truthfully it was pot luck. “We thought he was the cutest,” is the only criteria she can remember at the time.
But after many months of meetings to decide the name, with lots of craic along the way, they discovered the dog was a natural. He won in Shelbourne on his second run, a night Aileen and the girls will never forget, before going straight into the Derby quarter-finals.
Unfortunately he took a bad bump in that race and was eliminated. He would go on to win for them on Derby night, though not in the big one and while preparing for another crack at the Derby in 2010 he injured a hock and had to be retired.
While some of the group wanted to adopt him as a pet, Scolari was destined for a much more fun, and active, retirement. Now in stud he has a blossoming career creating new pups and one of his progeny has become the second dog for Glamour Paws to invest their hopes in.
With no name as yet – Aileen advises that process will take a good few meetings – it will possibly be up to year before he will run but the group wanted a dog with a link back to their first love.
“The girls were so attached to the first dog, we decided to wait until there was a litter to choose from and from that we selected our second dog,” she said.
Now six months’ old, the unnamed carrier of the Glamour Paws hopes will be assessed and fretted over by the nine women for the next year, but that is all part of the fun.
Glamour Paws had designed an extended committee system and chairperson structure that would put the GAA to shame but in the end it fell to Aine Costello to hold the group together and Aileen advises that you need one person driving on the group to make a syndicate a success.
It was Aine who got everyone behind the idea of taking one of Scolari’s youngsters to carry on the syndicate and now they are all glad they did.
For any would-be owners out there who imagine themselves facing the cameras at Shelbourne Park on Derby night, Aileen has some advice.
“If you want to know what you’re getting,” she says, “buy a race dog that had a few runs but if they have proven themselves they will be too expensive for the average person. If you want the real dream, buy a pup (expect to pay around €1,000) and you never know, you could have anything.”
One of the members of the syndicate has bought another pup with her boyfriend and it won its first race at the weekend so the formula, while a gamble, can work and offers great excitement for very little money – about a tenner a week according to Aileen.
As Aileen says, for very low cost, you get an awful lot back in terms of excitement and enjoyment – and maybe, just maybe, a real superstar.
