1947 Jackie, the most exciting dog in Ireland, and favourite to win the Easter Cup, despite the present of Quare Times, is purchased by Fred Trevellion for £2,000. Much to the angst of Irish racegoers, the renamed Trevs Jackie is removed from the stake and taken to Trevellion’s kennel in Dartford.
1968 White City receive £12,000 in entry fees for the Derby. Of the original 195 pre-paid entries, 80 chose not to enter, while there were 13 late entries @ £100 (£2,161 today). It represented a £550 increase in 1967 fees, and £970 more than the previous year. The winner’s prize is £7,252. (£156,745 today)
1975 Mount Vernon track in Scotland offer an unusual first prize for the winner of the Easter Handicap, a four day trip, for two people, to Dublin.
1952 Report in the Daily Herald: The bus passengers watched the big greyhound as he ran swiftly beside them. At the next stop, the dog was aboard ahead of the queue. He sat on a back seat and panted. ‘How sweet’ said several women passengers. Mrs Ivy Hopkins, clippie on the bus yesterday as it passed through Cymmer, Glam. Told the dog ‘Come now you must get off’. The greyhound showed its teeth. ‘Naughty bow-wow’ said a boy. The driver Robert Barwick, had a try but the dog growled louder. Mr Barwick drove to the police station – and here the comedy ends. Because when Sergeant G Guy came out, the dog gripped his wrist in its teeth. He had to strangle it with his free hand. Later, another police officer said: “That dog was dangerous. It had escaped from its escort on its way to be destroyed.” Sergeant Guy was given treatment and injections.
1974 Locally owned Quote Me (The Grand Silver-Gruelling Point) just got up to win the £2,000 Clonmel Produce Stakes by a short head from Mountleader Omar. The winner is owned by Moira O’Callaghan, whose family owned the track before it was acquired by Bord na gCon.
1937 When sponsor George Flintham is unable to present the Stanley Cup to the winner of the Grand National of the West at Gloucester, a suitable replacement is found. He is Maharajah Kumar Vishewar Singh of Darbangha.
2012 Charlie Lister receives his OBE from HRH Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace.
1947 An advertisement from Greyhound & Bloodstock Agency (underwritten by Lloyds). “1946 was a black year for greyhound owners. They reeled under the blow of repeated epidemics. Yet despite the owners’ worst year in history, all insurance claims, varying between £30 and £3,000, were paid within 14 days – many by return of post. 1947 is showing little improvement, so a word to the wise owner – insurance will save you from financial loss. Ask your broker today for details.” It transpires that the London broker is diversifying into insuring 200 runners in the ‘Coon Hound Championships’ – a 10 day trial for specially bred lurchers hunting racoons!
1992 Tragedy strikes in the final of the Scottish Derby when odds-on favourite Ardfert Mick breaks a hock when leading around the last bend. The race goes to 25-1 chance Glideaway Sam with Polnoon Chief in second.
1927 May 14th Dublin’s first track, Shelbourne Park, hold their opening meeting with a big attendance of 8,000 spectators. This was due to the bold advertising done by the Directors of the stadium, who placed an eye-catching advert in all the papers. There were no reports of anyone collecting the £1,000. The opening event a 500 yard flat race worth £10 to the winner was started by Sir Thomas Kyles, and was won by Mr J Ryan’s fawn & white dog, Morning Prince (King Karl-Rising Star). The 5-2 joint favourite won the opener by four lengths in 28.00, which was the fastest time of the night on the six-race programme.
1983 Trainer Ger McKenna announces that he is unlikely to send a team to White City for the English Derby. He is unhappy that the event will not be seeded in what is a ‘one year’ experiment. However, he will run dogs in the Irish equivalent, which is always unseeded.
1959 Young Irish pup Crazy Paracute makes his British debut in a Select Trialstake at Wembley (note the spelling). He narrowly beats Snub Nose in 29.58. They will finish third and second respectively in the forthcoming English Derby Final
1992 Wembley trainer Terry Dartnall is cleared by NGRC stewards after Crefogue Bob finds 79 spots and is back from 7-1 to 2-1 in a graded race. The stewards are critical of the Wembley racing office staff for grading the dog on his first 655m trial after lameness.
1975 New Irish arrival Flip Your Top (Own Pride-Whittle Off) breaks two of the country’s most prized track records in his first two races in Britain. On his debut he set a new Brighton 500 metre best of 29.26. Next time out he clocked a record for Wimbledon’s 460 metres of 27.55. Following the race, owner trainer Bob Young confesses that he had previously backed the pup at 200-1 to win the forthcoming English Derby.
1936 Mr W A Evershed, the owner of Derby winner Future Cutlet left a substantial legacy in his will to ensure that his former champion be kept in luxury for the rest of his days. He is transferred to a farm with the instruction that he be retired to a farm “there to gambol to his heart’s content.”
1982 Local runner Glen Miner added the Hove 515m track record to his clock for 490m at Wembley with a run of 29.62 in the Olympic Final. Miner’s best at Wembley is 28.98.
2001 Bob Gilling announces that Harlow is to become the sixth venue to stage the breeder’s festival. The event started out at GRA’s Northaw Kennels before switching to Harringay, Picketts Lock, Crayford and then Milton Keynes where it was ousted by Sunday BAGS fixtures.
1947 The Irish Coursing Club are in discussions with the Irish Government over the introduction of tote betting. Shelbourne and Harolds Cross have both owned tote facilities for many years which have never been used.
2011 Peter Laurie, head of Welfare and Integrity Services at the GBGB is unveiled as the new Chief Executive of the Retired Greyhound Trust.
1992 A new expanded BGRB meets for the first time since the announcement that greyhound racing is to receive voluntary payments from off-course bookmakers. The board is chaired by Lord Newall and includes John Sutton, Alan Fearn, Charles Chandler, Billy King, Clarke Osborne, Mark Glennerster, George Reptowski, Paddy Milligan, Pam Heasman and Archie Newhouse.
2001 The BGRB expresses “concern” that a group of small tracks have signed agreements to stage racing on the new digital TV channel ,Gobarkingmad. Their octet are Harlow, Henlow, Hull, Kinsley, Mildenhall, Rye House, Sittingbourne and Stainforth.
1982 Henry Kibble is before the stewards following Clear Vision’s 2 kilo weight loss and improvement of 146 spots at a Bristol BAGS meeting. Kibble blames the weight loss on a change of bread forced on him by non-delivery of his usual supply by bad weather. The stewards don’t buy it – he is fined £1,000.
1932 The National Greyhound Racing Society lifts its ban on the licenising of new tracks. The forerunners to the Racecourse Promoters Association had been concerned about the ‘saturation of tracks in certain areas’ and had introduced the ban the previous spring. Five new tracks immediately joined the NGRS.
2003 Wimbledon alter their race distances following major re-shaping of the first bend. It is now 412m from the previous, 408m. The 680m trip will become 688 and the marathon goes from 868m to 872 metres. The 460 and 480 metre distances will remain unchanged due to the relocation of the starting traps. The track also concede that some of the original distances were already fractionally inaccurate following the re-calculation from yards to metres in 1971.
2005 Norman Fannon, the promoter at Wheatley Hill, dies two days after an arson attack on his track.
1958 The first Greyhound Television Trophy Final sees an amazing upset when Derby favourite Pigalle Wonder is beaten at 1-4f over the 500 yard course at Wimbledon. The Wembley trained runner Town Prince went to traps at a 20-1 outsider with the newspaper pundits suggesting the Wimbledon Produce Stakes winner would have been better suited to the 440 yard Gold Collar which was being staged at the same time. Drawn six, the dog given to owner Norman Dupont (Brighton’s director of racing) by his breeder led from trap to line and just held off the strong finish of Sheffield’s Dancing Sheik (8-1) by short head in 28.14. The winner’s prize was £1,000. Beaten favourite Pigalle Wonder reappeared at Wembley a week later and set a new 525 yard track record when clocking 28.78. He was returned at 1-20f.
2012 Coventry races for the first time in three years under the promotion of Harry Findlay. The first meeting is oversubscribed with 12 opens and a crowd in excess of 1,200. Martyn Dore is racing manager.
Noreen Collin with Hi Joe
1966 The story of Hi Joe seems to have reached a sad conclusion when the dog is well beaten and finishes lame on his first official race in 16 months. The outstanding puppy of 1964, and ante post favourite for the 1965 English Derby, had been stolen in the January of that year from trainer Noreen Collin’s kennel in Epping. In the interim, he had almost certainly been racing on the flapping circuit where he picked up a serious wrist injury. He was eventually recovered some 13 months later. However, the small black was then subject to a shambles of a legal dispute which kept him off the track for a further three months. It was reported thus: “The charges were trivial but the cost of the investigation and trial ran into thousands of pounds. Essex County Council were landed with the bill because their police handled the case and the hearing was at the county’s Quarter Sessions. If it weren’t for the high cost in time and money – months of police enquiry and a six-day hearing engaging eminent council, – the Hi Joe case would be laughable. The real issue was regaining permanent possession of Hi Joe. The dog fitting his description was found when police, acting on a tip-off, entered the backyard of a house in Bedfordshire. A charge of receiving a stolen dog could not be brought, as there is a law prohibiting bringing a theft or receiving charge of a dog if the dog has been missing for longer than six months. Hi Joe had been missing for over a year. So charges of breaking into the kennels and stealing a dog coat were brought and the prosecution’s evidence was so thin that the defendant was in little danger and rightly acquitted. The police had to justify seizing the dog and returning him to Hi Joe’s trainer. That was why they were forced to bring their weak case to court, simply for the opportunity of demonstrating that the dog in the backyard was Hi Joe. If identity couldn’t be proven in court, then the defendant would have a strong claim to regaining possession of the dog, who he claimed he had bought at a temporary track from men unknown to him. At one stage of the hearing, the police must have feared that they were going to lose both the case and Hi Joe. Leading counsel for the defence, John Platts Mills QC, found a number of reasons for challenging the evidence on identification and vigorously pursued them in lengthy cross-examination. At the conclusion the chairman of the court, in dismissing the charges, said he considered identifying the dog as Hi Joe had been proved. He gave no order on possession, but the defendant, acting on advice, signed a statement withdrawing further claim on the dog.”
