<strong>Found myself in discussion with a young relative recently. Very bright guy, 31, high powered job, lives in Dubai.</strong>
Who is the greatest ever sportsman?
I thought there was only one answer.
He replied ‘Michael Jordan’.
Not Muhammed Ali?
‘No. If I was going for a boxer it would be Tyson Fury’
<strong>I’ve had loads of those type of conversations about greyhound racing in recent years.</strong>
I’m not just talking about ‘the fastest ever’ or ‘most early paced’, ‘Space Jet or Scurlogue’.
It might be a discussion about ‘training feats’ ‘feeding’ ‘breeding’ or ‘track preparation’.
It is practically impossible not to go into ‘old fart mode’
<em>‘We’ve been preparing sand tracks for over 50 years now. We’ve had some brilliant groundsmen. We don’t need more research. There is arguably nothing new left to learn. Just consistently apply the best of what we already know.’</em>
<em>‘Just because X won the Derby and Y won the Oaks, there is no guarantee that they will produce champions. How do I know? Because I study breeding history’</em>
<em>‘The best proven treatment for that type of injury is X . . . if it was good enough for Charlie Lister! . . . but you crack on with your own theory ‘</em>
<em>‘If you buy a dog from him, you’ll get your pants taken down. But you know best’</em>
<em>‘You call that a stroke? You should have seen TD in his pomp’</em>
<em>‘Yes, the tracks have tried similar initiatives to that many times over the past 40 years and they didn’t work’</em>
Yep – I can smell the cynicism and imagine the eye rolling from the reader.
<em>You negative old git!</em>
It took many years of youthful ‘thinking I knew best’ before I finally figured out that I didn’t. Knowing what should ‘obviously’ be done without understanding the value of caution before making ill considered policy changes.
Change frequently brings unforeseen consequences that are seldom as apparent as they first appear.
If, in greyhound terms, a rule has been in place for 60 years, there is probably not a lot wrong with it.
For example. If you bring in a four-day rule ‘for welfare reasons’ – have you considered ALL the repercussions?
Yes, I’m sure you have all the data on muscle tissue recovery periods but were you aware that you CANNOT keep a greyhound fit on one race a week without additional galloping.
If you exercise on badly prepared gallops – you massively increase the risk of injury.
Nor can you run on consecutive Saturdays and include a midweek sprint ‘sighter’ of a new track.
And don’t give me all the bull about ‘over racing’.
Only once in the last 10 years has a greyhound contested more than 75 races (a Harlow grader once had 80) within that year.
That would <em>still</em> be 11 races inside the ‘four day’ limit maximum!
All they have done is made life unnecessarily more complicated!!
<strong>But I consistently remind myself of the dangers of not challenging an old fogie mindset and not recognising change when it does occur. Because things <em>do</em> evolve subtly over time and creep up on you to a point where your old opinions no longer apply</strong>.
Yes, I am talking about seeding.
Like many readers, I grew up in an era of just two seeds, rails and wides – and it generally worked pretty well.
There were disputes of course. The most high profile were when Bob Rowe took on certain Irish trainers who decided it would be a shrewd idea to seed fast breaking railers as wide runners in the Derby and hope to profit as they cut across the field at the first bend. Remember White City, as a grass track, had no banking.
Big Bob was having none of it.
‘You will run with my seeding assessment – or not at all’
Bob won!
Then in 1996, following a campaign led by Peterborough Racing Manager Mike Middle, and a six month trial at Wimbledon, the NGRC allowed for middle seeding in graded and open racing.
To memory the NGRC were not overly convinced but found themselves in a situation of ‘if you don’t agree to this, you don’t care about welfare’.
Sounds a bit like the mentality behind the four day rule.
<strong>Once again – seeding has become a major issue. </strong>
<a href=”https://greyhoundstar.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/1992-Derby-runners-scaled.jpg”><img class=”wp-image-55103″ src=”https://greyhoundstar.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/1992-Derby-runners-scaled.jpg” alt=”” width=”605″ height=”787″ /></a> 1992 Derby entries
<span style=”color: #ff0000;”><em>What on earth could have possibly changed in the last 27 years to have the industry questioning something as tried and tested as the seeding system?</em></span>
For a start, it is clear that we now have many fewer wide seeds than we once did.
I couldn’t lay my hands on any useful data going back to White City days, but comparisons with a grass track are not necessarily relevant anyway.
But I did unearth a Sporting Life list of the 179 entries for the 1992 Derby at Wimbledon. Of those, 106 were railers (59%) and 73 were wide seeds (41%). This was before middle seeding remember.
Roll forward to 2023, and of the original 192 entries this year, there were 109 railers (57%), 58 were middle seeds (30%) and just 25 wides (13%).
<strong>What do we take from those figures?</strong>
Some people might form a view that the ‘Middle’ initiative simply gave trainers the opportunity to switch from wide to middle. The number of railers hasn’t altered dramatically.
But it surely cannot be that simple?
Racing offices are desperate for wide seeds. The middle seeds are not wide runners in disguise – there are very few genuine wide runners.
Why?
My personal theory is that this relates to breeding and the rise of the imports.
Frightful Flash, whose first Irish pups were born in 1994, led the revolution and was followed by the Americans.
Most Irish/British pedigrees have more imported bloodlines in the last four generations than they have European blood.
In previous breeding articles I have suggested that the whole reason that greyhounds chase the lure has altered with the imports.
Where once they chased to kill, the majority now rely on pure chase instinct. A more intense version of a pet dog chasing a ball or a stick.
In American racing, chasing a dummy bugs bunny was dropped years ago<em> (For political reasons. . . how did that work out?)</em> in favour of a foam bone or even a ‘mini greyhound’.
In Britain and Ireland many fewer greyhounds now ‘course the hare’ on the outside of the track.
There is a lot more to it of course, and I would expect this somewhat eccentric concept to be challenged.
To those who dismiss it though, I would be interested to hear of a better theory.
Irish tracks and schooling circuits are largely unchanged in decades. So what has happened to cause the change?
Answers on a postcard to . . .
<strong>Whatever the reason – many of us grew up knowing that trap four was ‘the coffin box’ and it wasn’t just because of the colour. Now trap five is the least popular box.</strong>
That change appears fundamental to the current seeding issue.
Trainers are REGULARLY seeding dogs, who would prefer traps three and four, as railers, because they perceive being drawn one or two is a lesser evil than being drawn in five.
This is potentially the most dangerous of all scenarios because nothing causes more trouble than the red jacketed dog who can’t take a bend.
<a href=”https://greyhoundstar.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Fromposttopillar2.jpg”><img class=”size-full wp-image-55106″ src=”https://greyhoundstar.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Fromposttopillar2.jpg” alt=”” width=”1630″ height=”728″ /></a> Controversy: Fromposttopillar – deemed a middle seed – taking the third bend at Monmore on Saturday<a href=”https://greyhoundstar.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Havana-Bale-Out-rails.jpg”><img class=”size-full wp-image-55105″ src=”https://greyhoundstar.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Havana-Bale-Out-rails.jpg” alt=”” width=”1630″ height=”728″ /></a> Railer Havana Bale Out (T1) clearing the third bend at Monmore<a href=”https://greyhoundstar.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Warzone-Tom.jpg”><img class=”size-full wp-image-55108″ src=”https://greyhoundstar.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Warzone-Tom.jpg” alt=”” width=”2466″ height=”1102″ /></a> Middle seed Warzone Tom (T4) taking the third bend at Monmore on Saturday
But there are are other issues too!
I’ve heard it said that much of this could be sorted if racing managers were tougher.
But give them a break FFS!
Racing offices are stretched to the limits with four/five/six meetings per week. The days of a grader having a decent knowledge about every dog on the strength – yes that was a thing – is no longer practical.
They might only be in the judge’s box for every third or fourth run, and may never have seen a particular dog trial.
So when a trainer says ‘seed him rails’, it is going to take a lot of confidence (or arrogance) to say, ‘no I am going to seed him middle’.
And that’s before we get into the issue of runner shortages.
How often does a grader look at a race and say ‘he isn’t really a five dog but something has to go in there.’?
I can answer that – every meeting, every day.
And let’s face it – trainers can be very two-faced.
Trainers having a pop at other trainers for the seeding their dogs and then entering runners in opens as ‘railers’ with five lines of ‘middle’ in their race comments.
But it doesn’t end there.
We all know that dogs can sometimes need different seedings on different tracks. They may vary as they age and as their trackcraft develops, or pups lose confidence after a first bend battering.
Greyhounds will also run with a different style depending on their position in a race, because a majority only ‘run in lanes’ when they get things their own way.
Many a middle or wide seed will cut across if they get clear space but will stay wide in company – and – a large percentage of those will rail in a solo trial.
Last but not least – at what part of the race? Wide on the straights but railing at the bends?
I gather RPGTV’s Dave Clark made a very valid point recently stating something along the lines of ‘we cannot go down the route of seeding a dog based on what he does at the second bend’. Or at least that is how is was explained to me.
<strong>So is there a solution?</strong>
I honestly don’t think there is – at least not a perfect one.
Keyboard warriors all have ‘silver bullet’ solutions but this is a complex issue with lots of moving and changing parts.
If there was a simple solution, we would have it.
I quite like the ‘rails, rails/middle, wide/middle, wide’ concept but even that has one great flaw.
Cheating trainers.
“My dog is definitely ‘rails’”
To even approach a solution, trainers will need to terms with ‘your dog might <strong><em>prefer</em></strong> trap one, but does he really <strong><em>need</em></strong> trap one?
In other words, it needs to be in everybody else’s best interest that he has trap one, because he will absolutely bore left from any other box and ruin the race.
There aren’t many of them and they tend to get protection in graded races, but not opens.
The unfortunate Bockos Doomie would have been a prime candidate for ‘protected red’ status.
Short of scrapping middle seeding altogether – I would like to see more racing managers take more control.
I would have no issue with ‘I decide the seeding, not you. Unless you can prove to me I am wrong. But a solo trial alone proves nothing’
Someone has to consider the welfare of all six dogs – not just the preferences of one.
<em>And I think Big Bob could live with that!</em>
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Finally – my thanks to reader Scott Logan for forwarding this piece from Countryman’s Weekly.
I don’t think it needs any further explanation.
<a href=”https://greyhoundstar.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/animal-rights-image-scaled.jpg”><img class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-55110″ src=”https://greyhoundstar.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/animal-rights-image-scaled.jpg” alt=”” width=”1920″ height=”2560″ /></a>
