1977 The NGRC announce the start of what will be a 35 year battle over the use of season suppressants. In a notice in the Calendar, the stewards note that the use of ‘the pill’ may affect racing performance and that in future enquiries, the use of a suppressant will not act as a defence in terms of variation of performance.
1948 Kilburn based Shermerdine and Mulley are adverting sets of aluminium starting traps, (indistinguishable from the bow-fronted boxes seen on tracks today). For the UK market, a set of six-traps will set you back £135 (equivalent to £5,625). The eight-trap sets, which are exported to the USA cost £170 (£7,100). The automatic start equipment retails at £75 (£3,125).
1962 Britain’s greyhound tracks have been liberated to introduce accumulator and jackpot bets following a change in the law. White City introduce 50 new booths to take bets on dual and treble forecasts and cannot cope with demand. Their second Saturday sees the pool reach £5,500 (equiv of £135K today). They will double the number of booths.
1951 Head girl Pam Heasman is to take over the Denver Lodge kennel of her boss, and leading trainer Stan Biss who announces his retirement from the sport.
2016 With secret negotiations ongoing between GBGB and the three tracks potentially hoping to stage the English Derby, TV pundit Matt Chapman revealed the Towcester bid live on TV. He claimed the bid which would guarantee £179,000 to the winner in a three-year £1m deal.
1961 Henry Kibble’s Drum Major is six years old when finishing third in a veteran’s open at Romford. As a youngster he was ‘asked to leave’ two tracks due to his errant behaviour. He now has over 200 races on his card.
1995 John Coleman finishes champion trainer after amassing some 818 points. Natalie Savva is next with 471 followed by Charlie Lister on 448.
2011 Hills announce that the 2012 English Oaks Final will rise from £6,000 to £15,000. The St Leger will also be worth £15,000, from £8,000. (Equiv. today of £20,500).
1988 Julius Caesar, bred by sisters Jean and Linda (Mullins) Chapelle is inducted into the NGA Hall of Fame in Kansas.
2015 Ladbrokes move to the top of the prize money table when guaranteeing that no greyhound will run for less than £40.
1948 Figures for the year reveal that the most expensive litter sold at auction were the four dogs and four bitches by Jealous Retort our of Maeysdd Merrylips who made 1,635 guineas. Roughly equivalent to £60,000.
2009 Ward Lovett are unveiled as the sport’s new PR agency replacing Freerange Communications.
2012 With three weeks prior to the closure of the track, GRA ask that Oxford’s remaining BAGS fixtures be cancelled. Meanwhile GBGB announce that trainers will receive £84 ‘redundancy’ for every greyhound that was on the strength in the final month of trading.
1939 At Coventry, the Eclipse Stakes final, worth £100 and trophy to the winner, sees four runners from Wimbledon line up against one local and one from Wembley. C Coombes’ Selsey Cutlet, trained Wembley, sees off the evens favourite Junior Classic and the rest to win the 525 yards in 30.65.
2016 The British Greyhound Racing Fund determined their budget for 2017 at £7.2m, down £200,000 from 2016. The figure is always a ‘best guesstimate’ of potential income based on current projections. Among the notable areas are reductions in funds to stadia grants, local advertising IT and RGT with an increase in prize money and breeders’ incentives.
2012 The Wimbledon Greyhound Welfare Winter Ball, arranged by Dawn O’Brien, raises £18,500 for the local homefinders.
1961 Wembley are to adopt a scheme introduced at Bolton and Blackburn flapping tracks. In each racecard they include a counterfoil for a free entry competition whereby punters are asked to select the forecasts for the last three races on the card. The original pot was £5 (roughly £125 today). It then increased by £2.10s for each meeting when it wasn’t won up to a maximum of £40.
1948 Hall Green finish the year as top of the winning tavourite’s table (45%) with Bristol second. Sheffield finish third (42.2%), Monmore are fourth (36.46%) and Wimbledon are sixth (34.49%).
1993 Middlesbrough hare driver Andy Sargent is taken to hospital after receiving an electrical shock from the hare controls.
1961 A recent 975 guinea (equivalent today of £25K) Shelbourne purchase has a name change. You will possibly know the litter brother of multi puppy Derby winning Sallys Chat under his new name, Printers Prince. It is under that name that he sired two of the most famous racing/coursing dogs in history, Newdown Heather and Yellow Printer (plus Cricket Bunny, Elland Ranger, Moose Jet, Pats Majestic, Abbey Groves etc etc). However, but for Mr D Heale wanting the dog to have his ‘Printers’ prefix, the name in thousands and thousands of pedigrees would have been ‘Sallys Nigger’.
