ENTAIN BOOST PRIZE MONEY & INJURY RECOVERY SCHEME
Entain today announces enhancements to their injury recovery scheme as well as significant improvements to their prize money structures, at their four Ladbrokes and Coral owned tracks – Monmore, Crayford, Hove and Romford.
Ian Smyth Director of Stadia said today “Welfare remains at the heart of everything we do and we continue to work as hard as we can to drive injury rates even lower. Where our greyhounds do suffer injury we want to do as much as we can to support our owners and trainers at what is already a difficult time for them.
“We are therefore able to announce today that with immediate effect we will cover the full cost of surgery following injury that takes place while racing. The GBGB already contribute through their own injury recovery scheme and in taking this step we can eliminate any cost burden placed on the owner. The ARC tracks and others including Yarmouth & Kinsley already operate similar schemes and we have taken the decision to align ourselves with what is an industry leading approach.
“We know that with the right treatment and care these greyhounds can go on to have long and happy lives and this increased funding signals our intent to facilitate this transition from racing greyhound to retirement companion for even more of our greyhounds.
“With our tracks now reopen to the public it was always our intention to review our prize money structure and open race programmes. It has always been my desire to better align our prize money structure across our four tracks and, while recognising each track has different priorities, we have been able to take a significant step towards achieving that alignment.
“Graded prize money will increase from September 1st by over 7% on average with the primary focus on increasing placed prize money at all tracks.
“At a time where COVID continues to have a huge impact on economies and businesses it is a reflection of our commitment to trainers and owners that we are able to take this step.
“Our open race review sees a number of plans and new initiatives for 2022 that we will share fully as the open race calendar becomes available. We have already increased the placed prize money at Romford back to it’s pre COVID levels and plan to increase our open race offering through to the end of 2021 at all tracks with over 100 open race meetings already planned for 2022. These will include the further development of our festivals approach which has worked so well in the last 8 months as well as significantly increasing our overall level of open race prize money spend.
“These are exciting enhancements that reflect our long term commitment to the sport at all levels as well as reaffirming our commitment towards the welfare and wellbeing of each and every greyhound in our care.
ARC CONFIRMS PRIZE MONEY INVESTMENT ACROSS GREYHOUND STADIA
Arena Racing Company (“ARC”) today confirm significant further investment in prize money levels across its five greyhound stadia. From 1 September 2021, prize money across all meetings at Central Park, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sunderland and Perry Barr will be both enhanced and standardised.
In addition to the industry leading injury recovery scheme, which is in place across all five stadia, ARC will cover Greyhound Retirement Scheme (“GRS”) Bond payments for all contracted trainers during the remainder of August and throughout September.
ARC Greyhound Operations Director, Rachel Corden, said, “We are very pleased to confirm significant investment across all five of our stadia from 1 September. The last eighteen months have been tremendously difficult for everyone across the industry. We were keen to review our commitment to owners and trainers and I’m delighted that we are able to announce our new structure.”
“We will be meeting with our attached trainers across all five stadia over the next week to take them through the full details, including additional contractual benefits that we will be looking to make available to them.”
“Our injury recovery scheme, which we have been proud to implement across all of our stadia, ensures that any greyhounds that are injured in competition receive expert veterinary treatment, through our veterinary partners and our financial support. In addition, we will support the GRS Bond scheme which has been an excellent step forward by the whole industry to assist with homing on retirement from racing.
“Our extensive Open Race schedule is already in place for the rest of 2021, and we are looking forward to working on an exciting open race schedule for 2022 in due course.
“We remain, as ever, committed to supporting the sport and hope that investment both in prize money and welfare provision will be for the benefit of everyone involved, going forward.”
PELAW TOO
It has also been announced that Pelaw Grange are also to increase prize money
Jeff McKenna said: “Having being able to open back up to the general public Pelaw Grange are delighted to increase prize money across all grades enhancing run and first place monies. We are grateful to Arena Racing Company (“ARC”) for their continued support”.
