The end is inevitable
Yesterday the Government ordered another three weeks of lock-down, but the end, of sorts, is clearly not far away.
You don’t need to be a virologist or academic to see a pattern emerging. Governments around the world are having to balance the Coronavirus risk against the dangers of not letting off the handbrake a bit at a time.
Financial and mental health are just two of the big factors forcing their hands and even badly hit countries like Spain and Italy are looking at small steps back to reality with small businesses starting to re-open.
Britain is still earlier in the curve but the nightmare scenario of 200,000 deaths seems to have been averted and we if follow the patterns of the other countries, and the fatalities start to decline next week, normality will begin a very long journey back on May 7.
(If you are one of the people who don’t trust journalists to deliver fair and balanced reports (!!!), you might find this interesting
But it will be a very long road back for so many
To quote Churchill, ‘Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’
It is inconceivable, in my opinion, that Coronavirus will cease to be an issue in the next year, particularly for the vulnerable.
Life will not vaguely resemble ‘normal’ in three weeks time even if Boris gives us the cautious nod.
Even at 100,000 tests per day, it would take the guts of two years to work your way through the population of Britain.
How will it be possible to allow a crowd of 40,000 people into a football ground, or 10,000 into a horse racing festival any time soon?
Is it even feasible, for example, to have 100 strangers crammed into one railway carriage on the Central Line?
Surely talk of sport resuming behind closed doors is no gimme either.
Okay, Manchester United v Liverpool with no crowd, only the TV cameras on a Tuesday night. How many players and staff does that entail. As for whether Big Virgil would allow Marcus two metres of space and no bodily contact is another issue.
Yes we can
Greyhound racing is in a very different position and as was demonstrated prior to lock-down, we can minimize the risks.
In terms of the individual kennels, they have been socially isolated with each other throughout the lock-down.
If the first stage of the release is to allow people to return to work but maintain social distancing, the racing offices are back in the game.
A couple of stewards and a vet in the paddock. The vet could perform a hands-on check, where necessary, but otherwise simply have the dogs trotted-up as has always been standard practice.
The dogs could be taken to traps in distanced pairs – 1 and 4, 2 and 5, 3 & 6. The pick-up could be slightly more problematic but issues could be reduced by the number of kennels involved, which leads to the actual mechanism for returning to racing.
Having spoken to a number of kennels, it is obvious that the vast majority of racing dogs are still being kept active. What else would the kennels be doing after three weeks with no racing?
My view would be to advise trainers that trial sessions are provisionally planned for May 7 and to prepare their dogs accordingly.
Each track would be in a position to hold three trial sessions per day, up to the limit of their number of kennels.
The 10am session would be for the three most local trainers to bring as many runners as possible in available vehicle space. Let’s assume at a track like Romford, it would be three kennels all with at least 30 dogs.
There would be a second session at 2pm, and a third at 6pm, roughly 270 dogs trialled in a day. The entire kennel strength would be back available by Sunday evening.
Every dog would be trialled and have its first race back over the SPRINT distance.
In other words, racing could commence with 14 sprint races on Monday 11 May with the dogs who had trialled the previous Friday. Do NOT tell me it is ‘over racing’ dogs to give them two runs over 225 metres in four days! After that short sharp burst, it is back to normal.
To simplify matters further, I would suggest that until further notice, there would be no more than three/four kennels represented at any meeting.
The betting scenario
I received several pieces of correspondence following the article earlier in the week relating to the plight of the on-course bookies
Some were in agreement, with huge doubts over the temptation of the betting industry to add a layer of cream to their algorithms.
For all those shouting ‘conspiracy theory’, I would remind you of the invention and introduction of chart forecast returns which were way less favourable to punters than the track forecast returns previously used.
But Mike Smith is of the opinion that Gambling Commission would actually favour the new system.
He says: “What will the government make of plans to use industry prices to settle off-course bets on greyhound racing? I suspect that the Gambling Commission will be delighted and merely ask why it took so long to ditch the old SP system.”
He backs up his argument with the following words from the GC from their report into the issue at Sittingbourne back in 2013:
“Furthermore, it has become apparent from our investigation that the system for setting the SP may be inherently fragile and vulnerable to the risk of manipulation. While the Commission accepts that at many tracks that vulnerability is likely to be mitigated by the competence of those operating the system, and the effectiveness of the policies and procedures they have put in place, where those may be lacking, as was the case with some of the operators connected with the relevant Sittingbourne races, manipulation must be considered a realistic possibility.
There is a significant public interest in the long term sustainability of greyhound racing both as a sport and entertainment enjoyed by many people and as a betting product. Such sustainability is likely to depend on maintaining public confidence.
In that light, the Commission welcomes the commitment made by the Bookmakers Afternoon Greyhound Services (BAGS), with the support of the Greyhound Board for Great Britain, to reinforce, as a matter of urgency, the contractual obligations and controls that underpin the integrity of the current system. Whether or not more fundamental reform is required in the longer term will be a matter for the betting industry.
I think Mike makes a very valid point. Whatever the pros and cons, if racing does return behind closed doors, you can guarantee that there will be no bookmakers in sight.
The tracks view?
They are keeping their heads down. But let’s not forget that it has been costing some tracks the guts of £1,000 a week to pay bookies to stand at BAGS/SIS meetings. . . . .
