“If I had two wishes, the first would be for a synthetic racing surface that was safe for greyhounds to race on. It would be consistent in all weathers and would require minimal maintenance.”
The issue of running surfaces never goes away and is a subject that covers two of the most important facets of racing: welfare and integrity.
It was always thus, though more often than not, it was more about integrity and less about welfare.
It is also worth remembering that for almost half the sport’s history, we raced on grass.
Although dog men of a certain vintage will remember lush green circuits, their misty eyes would be peering through emerald tinted specs.
Grass was far from a perfect surface. It froze in the winter, baked hard in the summer and was prone to becoming a mud bath in wet springs and autumns, with huge variations between the running and hare rails. All of this when staging, typically, 16 races each week in the winter and 24 in the summer.
We had many more broken and knocked up toes and hocks, more tendon issues, though arguably less muscle injuries. It was impossible to bank tracks and centrifugal force exacerbated any in-race trouble.
(Peat was another option but was more expensive and required at least as much maintenance.)
Sand was first introduced into Britain at Rayleigh in 1972 but took a long time to be accepted by industry stalwarts.
By the 1990s, the majority of tracks had converted, albeit some via the halfway measure of ‘sanded bends’.
Track maintenance was minimal, a few staff with rakes and a plate, sometimes with a separate spiked attachment and plate pulled around the circuit a couple of times. ‘Water if it hasn’t rained this week’, often with a couple of garden hosepipes.
Compare that to now with deep harrows and tines, crumblers, scarifiers and different types of plates. Sand is analysed and every track has a borehole.
Yet it is still the track surface that is the first culprit when injuries occur.
“Two broken hocks last week alone – death track!” (Yet maybe 600 greyhounds had raced or trialled during those seven days).
The problem with track preparation is that so many variables need to be taken into consideration and that makes a ‘scientific approach’ so difficult.
Not only might you have moisture, humidity, and temperature swings, two tracks may behave entirely differently dependent on the land that they were laid on – sand, clay, or rocky bases. Two sides of a track may vary depending on protection from the wind.
Then there is the sand itself. Not all sands are equal, and some are so inconsistent as to be impossible to work with.
Readers of the Greyhound Star newspaper may recall a feature many years ago when Gordon Bissett gave me a tour of the famous Leighton Buzzard quarry on which so many tracks were dependent.
The ‘Leighton Buzzard 26a’ was the ultimate sand of choice.
But even then, Gordon reminded me that all seams have a lifespan and there might even be significant variation within a seam.
It is now being suggested that although there are still millions of tons of silica in the quarry, that particular carefully selected blend of clay, loam, and granules may no longer be the optimum for greyhound racing’s requirements, at least in the view of some track staff.
Sure, there are options to sift and wash the basic load, but tracks have been looking elsewhere too. To Kent in fact, from where Pegasus is the new kid on the block.
It may seem absurd that lorry loads of the stuff are being driven hundreds of miles to tip on greyhound tracks as they search around for local alternatives.
“My second wish would be for a perfect system for watering”
There are three main methods for watering a greyhound track. A bowser, a sprinker system, and hand watering.
The bowser can deliver huge quantities of water onto a circuit very quickly. Depending on the camber and drainage, it can be incredibly effective. Its downside is that weight of the appliance itself.
Work done of STRI showed heavy compaction of the surface where the bowser wheels had repeatedly driven across the track and a hard track is a dangerous track. Worse still is an unevenly hard track.
It was Gordon Bissett himself who travelled across the world to study sprinkler systems and after spending many thousands of his Ladbrokes budget, came to the conclusion that in this country at least, they are a long way short of optimal.
Any level of wind can cause pooling and it is the inconsistency between different areas that leads to injury, but also biases.
(It was Bissett who also spent significant sums of Ladbrokes cash experimenting with different additives to bind the sand to keep it manageable in sub zero temperatures)
The third option is hand watering. It too, is far from perfect, and it is costly in terms of man hours. Indeed, I recall former Swaffham promoter Tom Smith insisting that the only way to ensure that a track was kept in pristine condition was too keep it moist throughout the week.
In the summer, Tom could often be found watering the track at 11pm, racedays or otherwise.
Conversely of course, if there was a deluge of rainy days, the track could be overwhelmed and drainage systems struggling to cope.
We have seen a fabulous example of the importance of drainage at Sheffield where the six figure investment has resulted in the most consistent surface seen at the venue in years.
And it is watering, or to be more accurate, inconsistencies in moisture content, that cause the biggest headaches for the betting industry.
Who can remember when a gambling coup was deliberately manufactured at Sunderland when wide runners dominated the results and the track had its BAGS contracted suspended?
Before Christmas there was a meeting at Crayford where punters lumped on inside runners and the bookies faced a hiding. Fortunately, one of the trainers withdrew his later runners which led to industry SPs being returned and the bookies were saved thousands.
I must stress that there is ZERO suggestion of anything dishonest in the track preparation. This clearly is a watering and plating issue – there is no difference in the sand across the track – but it has to be said, there must be a particular issue at that track. (Possibly due to the track’s tight proximity of the grandstand???)
On one occasion several years ago, Gordon Bissett suspended a Crayford meeting halfway through and had the track staff flood the circuit. It caused a huge outrage with accusations of bookies fiddling the track to suit themselves.
Bissett argued ‘the card was graded to give equal chance to the railers and the wides. The circuit hadn’t been prepared correctly, which we then rectified’.
Personally, I fined it interesting that Wimbledon is invariably held up by trainers as the greatest example of a well prepared track. Yet I can recall dozens of summer meetings where the going might go from .40 fast in the first race to ‘N’ by the fourth and it had to be flooded again midway through the meeting.
So is there a solution to all of this? When track can run consistently, inside to outside, summer and winter, rain, frost and sun?
I decided to ask someone who knows far more about the subject than I do. The person whose ‘two wishes’ are highlighted above.
He reminded me of the work carried out by the BGRB working with the Sports Turf Research Institute many years ago.
For those delving into their memory banks, there were two artificial surfaces up for consideration. One was Starmat, developed by Joe Hurley in Northern Ireland. The second was Viscoride, a product used in horse racing in France.
The BGRB realised that they would need to be tested before they could ask any promoter to lay them. I clearly remember the forums kicking-off. ‘What a waste of money. Someone is on the fiddle’
(Such is the nature of the forums. They were quite prepared to let greyhounds to act as guinea pigs. Would they want that for their own dogs?)
The cost was enormous. A schooling track had to be leased. Greyhounds had to be bought and kept. There was the cost of actually laying the test surface and veterinary monitoring.
The BGRB decided that they couldn’t afford to road test both preparations. They asked STRI to choose the most likely and they opted for Viscoride.
I do remember that ultimately Viscoride failed its audition, though I couldn’t remember why.
“It looked really promising until we had extremes of weather” I was reminded.
“The binding agent was a form of wax and there was a failure of viscosity. When it was warm, it was too runny. When the weather was cold, it started to solidify.”
So it was a complete waste of time?
“No, not at all. There were options to use different types of binding agents. Different wax combinations. Unfortunately, this all took place when bookmaker income to the BGRF was around £12m per year. As the income dropped, they couldn’t afford to keep the experiment going.”
My thanks to all those people who contacted me regarding last week’s column. Most didn’t want to be mentioned.
An exception was Pat Quinn, former Assistant Trainer to Pam Heasman.
You may recall me mentioning Pam’s battle with the Southend management when she labelled the track unsafe.
Pat said: “Pam was at a trial session when dogs broke hocks in three consecutive trials. She refused to trial her dogs and told Mike Palmer, who was at Greyhound Owner at the time, that the track was unsafe. He then published the story.
“Southend decided to sue her. I remember her legal bill was around £35,000, which was a lot of money back then. She nearly went bust over it.
“That was a great article by the way, probably among the best three I have ever read in Greyhound Star.”
Maybe it’s my age, or more likely, my belief system, but the whole idea of ‘cancel culture’ sickens me.
A generation have determined that they have more rights that anyone else, that they have a right to impose their values on others.
What really sickens more than the non-binary know-everything work dodging tossers, are the gutless, morally bankrupt, corporate snowflakes who buckle to it (guess that rules out my first Netflix series)
Greyhound racing hasn’t escaped cancel culture, and I have had a couple of examples of it sent to me recently.
This might be a position you want to watch closely
Finally, last week’s mystery singer, made contact having seen his audition on-line.
“You’re a prig, Jimmy Wright is a prig and Mullins is a prig”
At least that’s what it sounded like – I struggle with foreign accents.
Anyway – the pint sized Pavarotti is denying being binned by Simon Cowell and refuses to be silenced.
I wonder whether GBGB have made any plans for post-awards entertainment?
