I’ve always been fascinated by cheating. Coups, ringers, and dopings form much of the dark history of greyhound racing.
But being fascinated by something is absolutely not the same as approving of, or endorsing it. You can be fascinated by murder mysteries without feeling the urge to kill a prostitute and tastefully rearrange her intestines.
Of all subjects in this industry, it is the one where – as hard as we might try to simplify it into a black/white issue – it can only be viewed, in its entirety, in shades of grey.
Our archives have dozens of tales of doping and skullduggery.
On either side of World War II, doping of greyhounds was rife. Tens of thousands of pounds could be made on influencing the result of just one race.
In most cases, the dopers were not ‘greyhound people’. While a few trainers or kennel staff were bribed/threatened to give a dogs drugs, most dopers were simply criminals who learned their trade doping racehorses. Their modus operandi was usually to apply for jobs as kennelhands.
Then there were the ‘doping gangs’. At a time when almost all greyhounds were kept in huge kennel complexes, owned by the stadiums, (Burhill, Northaw, Keston, Claverhambury, Ockendon) it was quite feasible within a single night to break into six neighbouring kennel blocks with access to a track’s entire racing strength.
The drugs invariably were ‘stoppers’. Luminal was a particular favourite as the symptoms weren’t obvious until the dogs raced.
The methodology for targeting runners was equally crude. Being unable to identify individual hounds in the middle of the night, gangs would dope ‘all the dogs of a particular colour’, or ‘all the dogs or bitches’ or ‘all the dogs in two of the ranges’.
Readers may recall the article with Len Franklin. As a professional punter with a close attention to form, he would often be suspicious of a doping incident before the track management were even aware of it taking place.
Very occasionally, the dopers might target the track themselves. In one case, it involved a particularly small person being hidden within a recess of the kennel block in the paddock at White City and hiding drugged meat in the kennels
One of the most famous incident of all involved Britain’s most celebrated spy of World War II, Eddie Chapman – MI5’s Agent Zigzag.
The greyhound authorities took greyhound doping very seriously, though their concerns were almost exclusively directed at ‘integrity’ rather than ‘welfare’.
It was commercially vital that the public trusted the integrity of greyhound racing and huge resources were thrown at it.
In the early days, it involved beefing up the security at the kennels with nightwatchmen and guard dogs.
In 1964, working with the pharmacology unit at Glasgow University, the NGRC fitted out a van with equipment to carry out thin-layer chromatography, a technique that had been around a decade. If drugs were present in a sample of urine, the results would show up with a unique pattern which was compared known drug profiles.
Within a year, GRA’s Stamford Bridge had the first ‘chromo’ unit on site. Urine samples would be taken from every runner at the time of kennelling, and ‘any’ drugs would be detected before the first race.
The dog would be withdrawn and the sample would then be forwarded to laboratory for more detailed analysis and prosecution of the trainer.
When the Stamford Bridge stewards detected and prevented the first mass doping in a race, it signalled the spread of the concept across the industry.
At one level it worked. ‘Chromo’ detected the crude barbiturates used by the doping gangs, and they ceased to become a threat.
But it shouldn’t get all the credit for the decline of the doping gangs. Perhaps even more relevant, was the introduction of contract training which saw the individual trainers’ kennels dispersed.
Additionally, ‘chromo’ was very inconsistent and expensive – even by the mid-1990s, the BGRB grant for drug testing was bigger than its prize money allocation.
More importantly, it was also a very blunt weapon. Numerous positive tests were later found to be inaccurate. Worse still, they gave a false sense of security.
Not only was chromatography testing extremely limited in the breadth of the drugs it could detect, it was also easy to beat.
Any trainer wanting to beat the system would simply administer a drug within the half hour before the test and it wouldn’t have had time to be metabolized into the bloodstream.
After being repeatedly seeing laboratory positives reported following pre-race negatives, the NGRC opted to discontinue ‘chromo’ in 1996. (I had been nagging them for years!).
BAGS determined it was still ‘a valuable tool’ and insisted that testing continued at their meetings. Millions of pounds were quite literally, ‘pissed away’.
Of course, that only tells part of the story. More often than not, drugs were administered by trainers and kennelstaff – but for a complete gamut of reasons and motives.
At the top on the stinking pile were the ‘drugs cheats’. There is no exact definition for the term, but these were trainers who would want to win at all costs with no consideration for the dogs.
They would utilise ‘stoppers’ or ‘starters’ (I listed some of the drugs used in a recent article) depending on their aims to ‘bend’ a race for either a gamble or prize money. Normally the former.
Their identities were generally widely known by their fellow dog men and they were held in contempt.
Some tracks still owned ranges of kennels, rented out to trainers, but all on the same site. These shitehawks would find access to other trainers’ dogs and dope them. Some innocent trainers were hammered by ‘the Club’ who utterly failed to do their jobs diligently.
And don’t underestimate the influence of crooked bookmakers in this. Dig deep into any betting coup and you will nearly always find a bookie in the centre of it. They were the only ones who could make doping seriously lucrative.
Sometimes, doping kennel staff would make a career of it, moving from one kennel to another and would work in close partnership with a crooked bookie to maximise the gain.
The next group were the trainers who didn’t set out to cheat, or harm their dogs, but they were prepared to push drugs policy boundaries as far as they could.
They didn’t consider themselves as cheats, but ‘playing to win’. Although they stopped short of causing any harm to their dogs, if the NGRC weren’t looking for a particular drug, or were unable to detect it, then they saw an opportunity worth exploiting.
When the authorities finally caught on, the net invariably caught a whole load of them. One issue that springs to mind was the use of bronchial dilators, the sort used by asthmatics.
“They aren’t looking for them” was the word among many of the top kennels. . . until they were. . . .and a whole posse of leading trainers were caught at the same time.
Something not too dissimilar occurred when the authorities improved their testing for *anabolic steroids. A new substance would appear, be closed down, and then another.
(*One of the classic signs of steroid abuse showed up when the males were retired to stud. For at least three months they would produce a massive percentage of deformed sperm)
While it is easy to take a moral high ground on this, these guys felt they had to compete with their peers.
If the industry’s policy was flawed or badly implemented, was it fair – or realistic – for trainers to say, ‘I’m not going to do anything like that’?
If I had been training and competing, I would have taken every edge I could.
Then there were the rest.
Decent people, trying their best to keep their dogs on the track and occasionally cocking up.
Someone didn’t check the clearance time on the liniment, gave the wrong cough medicine, didn’t know the difference between two types of season suppressant, bought knacker meat because they couldn’t afford any better.
They took a gamble by trialling a dog two days after it arrived in the kennel without a clue what might be in its bloodstream or fur.
Or, ‘I know the rules say I shouldn’t trial this dog for another two days, but I can’t get a trial for another week and the dog won’t come to any harm.’
Of all the subjects that I have written about over the years, none has caused me more frustration and angst than drug policy.
The NGRC drugs testing policy was wrong on so many levels. It was solely geared towards protecting the betting industry with zero consideration for the trainer or the dogs.
They ran a policy that said ‘nothing can be given to the greyhound that can’t be attributed to normal feeding.”
You f***ing what!
Added vitamins? Yeast? Seaweed powder? Iron supplements? Tonics?
They knew trainers used them. That they needed to use them, but strictly speaking, they could be dragged in front of the stewards.
Trainers were expected to present dogs for finals, but were ‘not allowed to administer any substance within seven days of the race’.
We might be talking wound powder, Vaseline, antibiotics for a spiked toe. Treatments that would have made no difference to performance, but were encouraging trainers not to treat their runners.
Of course the Club – or the bookies – didn’t want empty traps but they didn’t give a toss that a poor dog might be being declined treatment for fear of a positive test on final night.
Their aim was ‘a drugs free sport’ which was bullshit then and is bullshit to this day.
But there was more.
They would fine trainers for using drugs outside the ‘seven day rule’, without the slightest evidence that some of the drugs, notably Metacam, was detectable for three months.
“We don’t believe you – you drugs cheat”
They had no understanding, or chose not to understand, the situation in relation to foodchain positives, notably the detection of drugs given to sick cattle before a decision was made that they should be slaughtered.
Nobody ever tried to dope a dog with Procaine!!!
The stewards had zero interest in ‘levels’.
In other words, even though they often knew that drugs found were in minute quantities, they operated ‘absolute’ policy.
The thing was – your fine wasn’t likely to be based on whether there was parts per billion or a bucketload of drugs in the dog, the punishment was likely to be based on who you were.
If you were an ‘ex flapper’ your punishment was guaranteed to be harsher than a trainer from a ‘respectable’ track for the same offence.
To conclude on this assassination of the NGRC and their inept and dishonest drugs policy combined with a lack of understanding of their industry, or the people in it – I must mention the NGRC stance on season suppressants.
Their policy was to allow the use of Durateston, which for years, was used to prevent bitches coming in season. The NGRC allowed it, even though it was an anabolic steroid which causes bitches to put on muscle, and in many cases made them more competitive.
It was, for bitches, just about the best drug for doping you could possibly find. Unfortunately, sustained contact with this male hormone saw physical changes that started to turn them into males. (Remember those Eastern bloc female shot putters from the 1970s/80s?).
There was a kinder option that many trainers preferred to use, Norethisterone, a female hormone. It prevented bitches from coming into season just as efficiently as the male hormone, it gave no advantage on the track, and didn’t ruin breeding careers.
Yet a whole string of trainers were fined for using it, because the NGRC didn’t approve it. Until ultimately, they flipped their views on the two drugs.
And yes it was added to their extensive portfolio of misjudgements or unsound findings, no apologies were ever issued. No fines were returned or reputations restored.
So why an article on drugs, and why now?
The first reason is to acknowledge the achievements of Duncan Gibson who, in the last few days has been unveiled as the new Senior Steward. During his time as GBGB’s Welfare & Integrity Manager, Duncan has transformed the industry’s drugs policy.
The former tax inspector who took a massive salary dip to become a stipendiary steward, wasn’t naturally drawn to the belief that ‘all trainers are it’.
He realised that the NGRC ‘zero tolerance on drugs’ was a complete crock.
Why?
Try replacing the word ‘drugs’ with ‘medicines’ and you can see the issue. Trainers have traditionally been put in a ‘no win’ situation.
So Duncan set about the unenviable task of treating each drug on its merits. He forged greater relations with the Australian racing authorities – who had literally spent tens of millons of $$$ on drug analysis, to a point that he was able to recommend to his employers a ground breaking set of guidelines with screening time limits.
HUGELY significant.
Thirty years ago I remember suggesting something similar to the head of the NGRC and was told, “it would be like teaching trainers how to cheat”
FFS!!!!
Instead, GBGB is saying to trainers, ‘we know you have a difficult job and want to treat your dogs to the best of your ability. This is how you can do it safely and within the rules.’
Which leads onto a popular misconception about how GBGB drugs policy operates in relation to ‘tolerance levels’
It is simple. Provided that the drugs are medicinal and are found within the limits as stated, they will not result in an enquiry. If they are above that limit, there will be an enquiry.
If, however, there are any traces whatsoever of a drug, which by its nature, would appear to have no medicinal benefit, there WILL be an enquiry.
If, for example, there were any traces of cocaine, no matter how small, the stewards will hold an enquiry and assess the merits of the case, based on the circumstances. You can expect that the quantity of substance found would play a significant role.
This would avoid the situation currently being encountered in American horseracing whereby the authorities have allowed ‘some’ tolerance of sinister drugs.
They are now, understandably, being questioned as to their impartiality and resolve to run a clean sport.
Ireland has also traditionally been seen as reluctant to rigorously enforce drug policy, but they have also raised their game significantly. I understand that Point of Registration positives have fallen by 90% since they were first introduced.
The second reason: there are currently reputed to be some high profile positive tests due to be heard by the stewards.
(I am continually amazed that there aren’t more adverse findings, given the number of times that runners in major races are drugs tested. Why doesn’t Joe Bloggs get any positives, even for ‘innocents/accidents? Probably because his dogs are very rarely tested)
Should any trainer have transgressed the rules, they must take their punishment. No matter how high profile they may be. It has to be seen to be even handed.
(Metaphorically double underlined and in bold)
However, before the keyboard warriors anticipate an opportunity to smear an industry that they will claim to love, and play into the hands of the antis, I would ask them to consider the following:
- Every positive test is NOT NECESSARILY a ‘doping’.
- Assess every case on its merits – what is the drug involved – what was the intention?
- Be careful on the use of the word ‘drugs’ when ‘substance’ would suffice. Most people reading this would currently fail a GBGB drugs test for at least caffeine. Are you a druggie?
- Trust the system. Given the sophistication of modern doping detection (using the same labs contracted by Government for court cases) anybody able to beat it could earn a far better living than training greyhounds?
As someone who has lived through years of doping – who has seen glassy eyed dogs being paraded on the flaps, and has even transgressed along the way (who didn’t use Bute years ago?), I KNOW that this is largely a very clean sport.
Nobody wants the dopers to win. It stops being about the best dogs and trainers, it becomes a battle of the chemists. It is also cruel and morally wrong.
But smearing the entire industry out of petty jealousy or spite towards the governing body only plays into the hands of those who would see greyhound racing banned.
