Rosstemple Dream, one of Richard Yeates’s finest performers over the past five years, has retired.

Dream, a winner of 32 open races and 40 in all, had a one in three strike rate.

In all she ran 109 races and will now take up duties as a brood bitch at the Yeates High Wycombe base.

Meanwhile, Freedom Emma, who trialled in a brilliant 26.49 last Saturday, has been included in the three nominees for Bitch of the Year at the annual greyhound awards next Sunday.

She is due run at Romford tonight and then on Springbok finals night at Wimbledon.

The Springbok Hurdle, worth £3,000 to the winner, gets under way tonight.

Both Johnny Mayo’s Special Caesar and Nick Colton's Tic Tac Boom should be in the line-up of 36 starters.

l OXFORD Stadium bucked the recession by showing a 70 per cent improvement on figures for 2008.

General manager Maureen Ridley said: “We had fewer staff, having made two redundancies, but one of our main streams of income, the tote, did not perform well.

“But the restaurant and bars performed above expectations and I am reasonably optimistic we can move forward this year.”

l SINCE completing the move to the former Gloria Stringer kennels, trainer Tony Magnasco has not looked back.

He had over 200 winners last year, and they have brought in another 18 November 08 whelps, prefixed Primo and Pennys, eligible for trial next month. A newcomer to Magnasco’s new kennel is Droopys Willow, who reached the final of the Warwickshire Oaks at Coventry.

THE GBRB have a two-for-one promotion where Oxford Stadium punters can take up the offer of two admissions and one racecard for £1, from February 1. All they have to do is download a voucher from www.2for1dogs.co.uk and hand it in at the turnstiles.