As an keen greyhound race follower and a regular supporter of Yarmouth greyhounds I was somewhat confused by the comments of Yarmouth Racing manager Marcus Westgate.
Surely the Yarmouth Championship should be open to greyhounds that are exactly that!
In his first paragraph Mr Westgate states that any dog in the race should be capable of breaking 28 seconds. He then says he has opted to exclude ‘Local Derby Winner – Do It For Twiggy’ and All about Class who raced in the East Anglian Invitation for being “too good”!
But here lies the confusion he then goes on further to say that Twiggy is capable of 27.50 and won in 27.87 the other night. Aren’t both these times under 28 seconds?
Twiggy is now four and a half and wasn’t able to compete in the final of the Yarmouth Derby due to injury, something that has plagued him for some time with very few races since the Derby. All About Class continues to live up to his name with three wins and two seconds from his last six races.
According to the racecard of Saturday 4th February 2017: Entry into the Yarmouth Championship requires the entrant must have had three graded races at Yarmouth within 12 weeks of the closing date and have current form. Both of these dogs meet these requirements.
However I was at the meeting the other night and watched the race that Mr Westgate refers to and what a race it was between the above mentioned dogs with only a short head deciding the winner! Surely these would be the kind of dogs you would expect in the Yarmouth Championship….isn’t the clue in the title?
I along with other followers of these dogs are both annoyed and disappointed that the supposed racing manager Marcus Westgate has taken this decision to exclude such class greyhounds and provide punters with a second class Yarmouth Championship.
K Hind
Racing manager Marcus replies: “Sometimes you have to go with your gut instinct, in this case these two dogs were an infinitely better class than the rest. They were both brought in at a later stage in the year after Open Race campaigns, and it just didn’t seem right to include them, so instead of having a two dog final, I tried to broaden it slightly. Rules will change for the competition next year to accompany my ‘gut instinct’.”
