When the new 500 metre starting traps sprung open for the first time today at Towcester, the sound might have been drown out by the sigh of relief from promoter Kevin Boothby.

His personal nightmare began when he spent £60,000 on five new sets of starting traps. His tracks have since endured void races, injured dogs, irate owners and trainers, media and internet abuse. But as the Henlow Racing Company hopefully comes to the end of a dark tunnel, the normally laid-back owner, promoter, punter and all round greyhound enthusiast is struggling to hold back his emotions.

He says: “It has been a nightmare. Literally, it has kept me awake at nights and caused so much stress. In hindsight, we should never have bought the new traps. But we spent a lot of money trying to do the right thing. Four new sets of traps and another as a spare. Looking back now, they had a design fault. We thought we could rectify it but never could.

“I tried to buy traps from other promoters, including some that weren’t in use, but they wouldn’t sell to me. Why? Because that is the nature of this industry. It is bitter, nobody wants to help. People say, ‘why didn’t GBGB intervene?’ I spoke to Mark Bird back in January and told him the problem and he agreed to try to find some more boxes, but nobody want to know. I’ve learned a hard lesson that I will remember in the future.

“Does anybody seriously think I don’t know how bad this looks for the industry, when greyhounds get caught up in the traps? I’m not blind or stupid. I’m a bigger animal lover than anyone. It is distressing and frustrating.

“But I want to throw one question out there. What is ‘welfare’ really about? Because as bad as the situation looked at Oxford, there were thankfully no serious injuries. One of the dogs caught up in the traps the previous week trialled at Kinsley on Sunday.

“So now lets talk about injury rates, and the tracks with problems with broken hocks. Where are the keyboard warriors asking about them? Let’s talk about running surfaces. We have some of the fastest dogs in England running at Towcester and I would stand our injury rates against anybody else. My suggestion that we should all make our injury stats public is still out there.

“As for people who say, ‘take the Derby away from Towcester’, if that is the general feeling of the industry, then so be it. We lose money staging the Derby and I’m fed up of the abuse.”

The new traps were actually built by the track themselves in their own workshop. Another set is currently in construction and will replace the sprint boxes ‘in about three weeks’.

Two new sets of traps are due to be delivered by Gavin Smith in July. One will go to Oxford to replace their sprint traps and the other will go to Henlow.