Human memory is a tricky blighter. Ask any woman who has just gone into labour with her second child.

‘****! Now I remember why I never wanted to do this again!!’

The brief recollection remains in the brain for a few hours and doesn’t return until the poor woman’s legs are back in stirrups.

Greyhound trainers suffer with something similar. Around every July or August, they pronounce that they have never known a period of injuries quite like it.

Unfortunately for them, there are annoying nerds like me who record their statements and compare them with their previous proclamations or even previous generations of trainers.

Injuries are part and parcel of greyhound racing and always have been.

Personally I don’t subscribe to the comparatively recently theory: injured dog = badly prepared track.

While track preparation is a key element, I think there are lots of other factors including:

– failure to detect and treat previous lesser injuries

– too much racing

– inadequate nutrition

– genetic weakness

– bad luck

But that is far from a complete list. For example, what about atmospherics?

There seems to be a trend that blames track managements for preparing faster tracks in the summer leading to broken bones.

Well consider this.

For the first 40 plus years of racing, track managements had very little to do with summer preparation. Back then, grass circuits were considerably less well prepared than they are today. A summer 28.90 dog might be lucky to break 31.00, or 31.50 in the winter if he was a railer. Straw or mud dependent.

In the summer, there was very little variation in the ground from one week to a next, bar an odd shower of rain. Yet dogs were much more likely to break hocks in the summer months. “Worst spell I can remember. . .”

Yes the tracks were firmer, but they could be firm in the winter too.

Not convinced?

Well others were, including veteran racing managers like Con Stevens and later the late Peter Shotton, who even considered taking humidity and temperature readings.

Given a clear run, these guys expected dogs to run almost identical times throughout the summer months, but some nights virtually every dog on the card found time.

None of this would have come as any surprise to the likes of Seb Coe or Steve Ovett. They could have attempted their ‘Dream Mile’ and other world records in January on a tartan track that would not alter through the seasons. Yet they chose the summer months.

Anyway – back to injuries – they are as inevitable as bookies winning and punters losing.

My question is – does the greyhound industry think about them in the right way?

I realise that I might be going out on a limb here, with the GBGB sitting on the next branch with a power saw, but why are we so squeamish about knocks and bruises?

We’ve just had a bout of it in the Derby. Newinn Yolo, Droopys Nidge, Droopys Ward to name but three. The prime of racing talent, all injured.

But what type of injuries?

Nidge had a muscle but should be back for the Irish Derby. Yolo had a broken bone in a hock, but should be back for the All England Cup. Ward also had a broken hock but can enjoy a retirement at stud.

I have spent a lot of time over the years studying injury figures and I don’t think it is any exaggeration to say that the majority of racing careers are ended by injury. But we are very very rarely taking about life threatening issues. The most typical scenario, in 99% of cases, is that a dog finishes lame in a race and the owners/trainer decide:

– it isn’t worth actively treating an injury that may take months to heal with a dog that is already past its peak

– even though the dog could return to racing fitness, his ability may be impaired to prevent him competing against similar calibre opposition.

Put another way – so many ‘career ending’ injuries are not ‘career ending’ at all. They are performance affecting injuries. We can include some of the real ‘black day diagnoses’ in that group, ‘dropped or sprained gracilis, ‘broken hock’, ‘chipped pisiform’, it would amount to an extensive list.

Yet lots of animals get injured in their line of work. Police dogs, military dogs, guard dogs, police horses, show-jumpers, racehorses. . .

What happens to horses who break a leg?

BANG!

It is that simple. It has nothing to do with lack of care, as we saw with poor Kauto Star.

As was pointed out to me recently, when Sheik Maktoum, with all his resources, cannot save a favourite racehorse, what chance the rest?

It is pure physiology.

Yet that doesn’t prevent a large cavalry charge starting out at Aintree every April, and a small cavalry crawl completing the course, with all of Britain knowing what is at stake.

Greyhound racing’s most recent high profile case concerned the unfortunate Pinpoint Maxi. I asked Kelly Macari how many greyhounds she had had to put to sleep.

She replied: “I can count them on one hand. We had one dog with a broken back and another with a broken front leg with the bone sticking through. There were probably two or three others who could have been saved, but they had the wrong temperament to be re-homed.

“That would be from several thousand dogs over ten years at Sunderland.”

 

In no way am I belittling the importance of injuries, I just feel that we think about them in the wrong way.

‘What will the welfarists think?’

Should that really be our first priority?

We know the injury stats are nowhere near as bad as they proclaim. The fact that one greyhound gets injured is all the evidence they will ever need to try to close it down. We will never be able to appease the ‘antis’.

No – we need to tackle injuries because they matter to us.

Nothing sickens an owner quicker than an injury to his dog. But at that point, the industry washes its hands ‘sorry mate, its your problem’

Years ago, the GRA would pay compensation to owners of any dog which broke a hock at their track.

In my opinion, if Tom Kelly secures any extra cash for the BGRF, the first place it should be deposited, even before extra prize money, is an injury fund to help towards operations and kennel fees during recuperation.

Every week, greyhounds are retired for commercial rather than veterinary reasons and this is going to become more and more relevant as the greyhound shortage builds.

So, if you are listening Betfair. . . .