I was delighted to see that Monmore have put up ‘also ran’ prize money to £60. It doesn’t seem so long ago that it was only £25 and now they have hopefully raised the bar for others to follow.
I have always supported the track with open racers and feel it is right that trainers back the tracks who back us. Open racing is vital. I know I am biased, but nobody sets out to breed or train graded dogs.
We all hope to get a champion and if you take away that aspiration to be the best, the whole pyramid collapses.
I was one of the trainers who wanted to see a new organisation to represent professional trainers and am sure John Coleman will do a great job if he is invited onto the board of the GBGB.
John is a realist who understands the problems faced by the tracks as well as the trainers, so they won’t be pulling the wool over his eyes.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of what has happened in the past, I feel that no one has been listening to the voices of the trainers.
It goes without saying that prize money will always be the first priority and hopefully the off-shore money will come through shortly. When it does, I would expect the Board to listen to the trainers as to how it should be spent.
But there are other things that urgently needed sorting too, and we don’t need the bookmakers to make these changes. The editor asked me to choose just three and this is my short-list.
1) Kennelling times: These were first introduced so tracks had time to check pre-race chromatography, but it was scrapped years ago. The subject has been talked about for as many years as I can remember but nothing ever gets done. And the problem has got worse with some BEGS cards up to 15 races long.
I am proposing that any track that starts racing at 6.30, when most dogs have already been kennelled for nearly two hours, should have a second kennelling at 7.30.
Now I accept that it would present problems. In the first instance, some local kennels may have runners in both halves of the meeting and it isn’t practical to have a second vehicle. That is fine, they would have the choice and they would be no worse off than they are now. But for others, including bad kennellers, it could make a huge difference.
There is also the issue of staff. Quite often it is the racing office staff who do the weighing-in and check the runners and they wouldn’t have cover. Well tough! If the tracks have to pay someone £30 to ensure that some of these dogs aren’t sitting in the kennels for upwards of five hours, it isn’t a big cost to pay.
I also know that there are issues over security with kennels being spread around randomly. But life has moved on since 1926 and by careful planning of kennels, and surveillance cameras, will should be able to sort it.
I had to kennel at half past five recently with one runner who didn’t run until 9.30. What a waste of time. More importantly it is a welfare issue for the dogs.
No more talk – more action.
2) Bedding: I think the standard of track kennels still varies more than it should. That isn’t an easy problem to solve but I would put Nottingham and Hove’s kennels among the best I have seen.
One thing that could be sorted is bedding. It varies such a lot from track to track, and some of it is very shoddy. As a bare minimum tracks should supply decent quality rubber mats in the kennel.
3) Standardisation: Nothing is more irritating for connections and punters than inconsistent form by dogs being switched from one type of traps to another.
I have nothing against either type; those with the curved fronts, or those with the flat fronts. But given most of our dogs come from Ireland, where all the traps are the flat front type, it would make sense that all ours are the same.
No track wants to scrap a perfectly good set of traps, but it would make sense to me that if any track is looking for a grant to replace starting traps, those grants should only be for a specific type.
Swindon is next on the agenda. Expresso Blue came off sore in his last race so our Produce Stakes team is down to Blissful Scolari who clocked 28.74 in a trial last week and Fearsome Phantom who did 28.94.
We have won the event twice in the past with Micky Robbie and Take The Crown, and this year won’t be any easier.
Rab and Liz McNair have a couple of cracking youngsters, then there is Monmore Puppy Cup winner Castell Henry, Westway Hawk, a stack of good Romeos and Fabulous pups and Jim Hayton’s latest Lowgate litter. . .
We also have a few runners trialling back. I was delighted with Droopys Folly who clocked 27.67 on her first look at Belle Vue. Her long term plan is the Lowther Stakes over 500 at Towcester.
Then we have Newinn Champ who has only raced once since winning the puppy race at Shawfield. He hit the inside rail at the same session or would have gone a lot quicker than his 28.25 trial. I was also pleased with Vatican Punch who Ian Greaves has always rated highly and is last beginning to show that she has some ability.
Ian sent Zaras Fantasy, the mother of Evanta Fantasy, to Swift Hoffman for a mating and she is heavily in whelp after missing from her last two litters.
Having handled stud dogs in the past, it saddens me to see British breeding struggling so badly.
I would love to see either the GBGB or some of the promoters take the initiative by encouraging trainers to breed a litter.
One solution might be for the tracks to buy straws from a particular stud dog, and give them to people keen to breed.
It is expensive breeding greyhounds but we can’t keep relying on Ireland to produce them and breeders need help on the long journey from whelping to the track.
Not only would tracks benefit from extra runners, if they were careful about their breeding choices, they could even concentrate on producing a few stayers.
