1999 Catford racing manager Stuart Netting quits the sport. The 30 year old, who at 20 had been the youngest racing manager ever appointed, describes his time in greyhound racing as “I have wasted 13 years of my life.”
1977 At Kilkenny, Joseph Phelan’s Pampered Rover (Time Up Please-Pampered Pegg, Jan 76) has his first race in the Offaly Stakes over 525 yards. From trap 4, he finishes third, beaten 1 1/2 and 1 1/2 lengths in 29.60. A year later he wins the Irish Derby.
2013 Trainer Frances O’Donnell’s five runners were withdrawn from the second round of the Irish Derby after she forgot the identity cards. Although the kennel’s defending Derby champ Skywalker Puma wasn’t designated to run until the following night, things went from bad to worse when he sustained a career ending broken hock. Milldean Panther had been retired after also breaking a hock the previous week followed the following week by Holdem Spy.
1948 Future English Derby winner Narrogar Ann wins Bristol’s Two Year Old Produce Stakes. The evens favourite leads home littermates Narrogar Dusty and Narrogar Tommy in 29.28 for Eastville’s 500 yards. The winner’s prize is £330 plus a trophy valued at £30 – index linked those figures would be approximately £13,035 and £1,185.
2014 Crayford increase prize money for ‘also rans’ in non-maiden opens by £10 to £40.
1999 The NGRC announce that Nikki Chambers Reading Masters finalist Smiffys Errand has tested positive for cocaine. However, they confirm that the drug “had not come through the greyhound. It is not a metabolite of cocaine.”
2013 Former Walthamstow trainer Graham Sharp dies aged 81.
1959 Recent Irish Derby fourth and Harolds Cross 750 record holder Skipit Laddie makes 390 guineas at Aldridge Sales.
2013 Slaneyside Mole, Supreme Madrid and Kickback Larry meet for the second time in three days at Hall Green following a triple dead-heat. Mole (5-2) wins the A2 re-run by a couple of lengths from Madrid (1-2) by a couple of lengths with Larry (11-2) a short head third.
1998 Eventual winners Sheffield are a best rated 12-1 chance with the bookies to land the Supertrack Final which will take place in three months time. What will prove better value at a quarter the odds to reach the final are Henlow rated the 500-1 rank outsiders by Coral.
2014 The Caffreys Puppy Classic gets underway at Nottingham with trainer Pat Rosney fielding the first two in the betting of an exceptional field. Ante post: 9-4 Swift Hoffman, 5-2 Newinn Yolo, 12-1 Touch Tackle, Billys Bullet. The event eventually goes to Newinn Yolo.
1993 Despite pulling the plug on their promotion at Hull, BS Group are interested in taking over racing at Canterbury.
1977 Xmas Holiday (Supreme Fun-Marys Snowball) is retired to stud at the kennels where he was born and reared, Phil Rees’ range in Surrey. During a successful career, ‘Pudding’ won the Laurels, Scurry and Essex Vase and reach the 1976 Derby Final won by kennelmate Mutts Silver.
1953 Kensington Perfection broke the Eastville 500 yard track record when landing the Two Year Old Produce Stakes Final for owner/breeder Mrs MD Phipps whose husband reared the Black Invasion/Lambourne Firefly litter on his 500 acre farm at Bicester. Perfection had previously won Produce Stakes finals at Brighton, Catford and Stamford Bridge and had reached the semi finals of the Wimbledon equivalent. His career winnings currently stand at £2,027 – index linked to £58,780.
2000 Wembley plc announce a 10% decline in profits from its greyhound portfolio of GRA tracks for the first six months of the year. The decline to £1.71m at Belle Vue, Catford, Hall Green, Oxford, Portsmouth and Wimbledon is largely due to the Euro 2000 football.
2015 Swindon introduce handicap racing.
1970 Bord na gCon are to increase all prize money by £3 per race. It will raise the standard distance contribution to £15 and will cost the Bord around £50,000 per year.
1985 The Dundalk International goes to the big priced blue, Shanagarry Duke and the TV Trophy to Coolbeg Keeragh.
2014 Following a threat of a boycott of the Grand National – due to plans to reduce it to 18 runners with a first prize of £2,500, Sittingbourne confirm that the event will go ahead with an £8,000 first prize.
1953 A first doping case involving greyhounds and an experimental new drug from the USA, Cortisol, reaches Coventry Police Court. The case concerns three men, currently bailed, for conspiring induce a kennelboy to dope a dog at Coventry greyhound track. According to the kennel lad’s testimony, he was given a cortisone tablet to give to a dog but vomited it with soda crystals 15 minutes later. Home Office Pathologist Professor JM Webstar confirmed that it would have been unable to detect the drug by a vomit test. The dog had won by 11 lengths and found 96 spots on its previous race. Cortisol is still being used experimentally in hospitals, mainly for rheumatism but was suspected of being used in some high profile horse dopings the previous year. In 1952, the Irish Government made the drug prescription only. Prior to that, it had been on sale at £7 for 40 tablets.
1998 Rye House stage opens after the England World Cup squad but are refused permission to name a race after England’s recently disgraced red-carded star David Beckham. The Beckham Special was to be contested by greyhounds who have previously had their cards marked.
2008 Jesters Nap (Droopys Vieri-Star Time), trained by the young Yarmouth trainer Jim Daly, wins the £6,000 Puppy Derby at Wimbledon. The 11-10f gets home by a comfortable three and a half lengths from Mistley Colonel in 27.55 for the 460m.
Charlie McCann (left) of Stan James presents the Puppy Derby trophy to Jim Daly, trainer and The breeder of JESTERS NAP. Wimbledon 5.8.08 Pic Steve Nash
We conclude the final section of the 1976 interview that took place with former Wembley trainer Jack Harvey.
“My next winner of this classic, Title Role, was the first leg of a St Leger double for owner Noel Purvis.
Title Role was a massive, muscular dog weighing 80lb.
At the start of his career I could not visualise him as a St Leger type, for greyhounds of his size are usually renowned for stamina.
Most of the top- and I mean really top-class stayers have been lighter stock with some quite small bitches among the best.
Nevertheless, Title Role turned out to be a prolific winner of races up to 700 yards. Not a particularly fast starter, he usually had to work his way through the field and just wear down the opposition with pace and determination.
And this ability proved to be his trump card in the Wembley classic, for he came from way back with a stunning run to beat quite a classy field.
The second leg of the Noel Purvis St Leger double, three years after Title Role, came with Barry’s Prince.
And what a relief for me to see him turn up, his owner having been occupied with other plans.
Mr Purvis was one of the last really big owners to keep an expensive string of greyhounds and that hear he had a tremendous prospect in the young Mile Bush Pride.
There had been considerable pressure on ‘N W P’ to put Mile Bush in the St Leger because the race seemed to be at his mercy.
On the other had, Mile Bush was still one month short of two years and, according to my book, too young for such a gruelling test.
I said so, and after a lengthy conference with Mr Purvis I succeeded in persuading him to let me keep Mile Bush for the following year.
So Barry’s Prince went into the St Leger as substitute. A very compact animal, he weighed 67 lb which looked to me just about right for the event.
He pleased us well enough in the preliminaries, yet still had to answer the big test.
On that night he turned out looking just grand.
I kept my fingers crossed for an awful long time before the finish of that race, knowing that Mr Purvis still had in mind what the Press had been writing about having the race sewn up with Mile Bush.
And responsibility for the change of plan was mine. But Barry’s Prince rose to the occasion splendidly.
Mile Bush Pride fully justified my confidence during the following year.
Patience was rewarded when he proved himself the best middle distance racer in the country by winning the Derby Triple Crown – the English, Welsh and Scottish.
So to my fifth and last St Leger winner Clonalvy Pride, kennel name Billy and the darling of them all.
His owner was Harry Seymour, a true sportsman who could accept success or defeat with equal grace and thus make a pleasure of training any greyhound for him.
In Clonalvy Pride (Billy) I had yet another delightful and really grand dog. He had a character all of his own, all my kennel staff loved him – and he knew it.
And their affection for him was genuine and personal not on account of the many races he won. Billy would have been the favourite in any kennels.
At the same time his track form was tremendous and I rate this greyhound among the greatest we have ever seen.
Consider first his performance in winning the 500 yards Laurels at Wimbledon, breaking track record during the running of that classic.
Then coming out shortly afterwards and running through the St Leger to win the fastest final in 39.64 secs, a time which has since been beaten only once.
That evening, for Angela and I, Billy crowned the greatest race meeting of our lives. There were fourteen races, a mixture of grades and opens, with Billy coming on late as the star attraction.
And I walked out of Wembley stadium having seen the numbers of eleven of my greyhounds go up first on the board. Truly a night to remember.
Training greyhounds was the occupation of my life and during forty years I had the good fortune to handle many of the best.
Thanks to their efforts, I’d also accumulated a handsome collection of trophies and mementoes from almost every big race in the calendar.
No room to list them all here, but they made a grand display in the home.
One evening, ten years after Clonalvy Pride’s St Leger, Angela and I returned from a weekend away to find our home had been burgled.
Worse than that – the place had been callously and completely ransacked. All my trophies had gone.
I cannot express my feelings about the kind of people who would be so heartless. Those trophies represented all my work with greyhounds.
Too easily identifiable for disposal as they were, their value in the melting pot represented no more than a tiny fraction of what they meant to me.
The loss was a cruel blow. Yet nobody can ever rob me of the happy recollection of being associated with, and responsible for, such as Sam, Billy and a host of other splendid greyhounds – bless them all. “
