• Charlie Lister OBE speaks out against criticism of Nottingham by contributors of RPGTV. He says: “”I’ve heard two or three of these young experts having a pop about Nottingham. ‘Is is the right track for the Derby?’ or ‘it’s not a good Derby track’. I’ve never heard such rubbish. I raced there regularly for over 35 years and put every one of my seven Derby winners around the place. It is a great track, and better than Towcester in my opinion. Yes, you need a strong running dog and it is a great run from the last bend. If I was trying to work out whether they were good enough, I would always put it around Nottingham. It has always been a great test of a good dog.”
  • A number of historic greyhound items, formerly belonging to the late Bruce Prole, are set to go to auction. Among the most interesting are the wooden awards boards, which famously ordained the entrance to the GRA’s Hook Kennels at Northaw. They depict every classic winner trained on the establishment prior to its closure in the mid-1980s.
  • Pat Buckley’s Braveheart Bobby lands the month’s most prestigious final, the RPGTV Scottish Derby (no presentation photo available).
  • Digbys Boy becomes the first 2018 whelp to win a race in Ireland. By year end, he will only have raced another six times.
  • Justice Zacaroli finds in favour of ARC in a High Court case claim against SIS for unauthorised use of data from a number of horse race meetings. The move might have brought an end to the media rights war. Instead, SIS appealed and a conclusion looks no closer. In fact, in the same week, SIS announce a deal with Mexico based Hipodromo De Agua Caliente, which will see 53 meetings per week broadcast via Mexico to Honduras, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Panama & Venezuela, as well as territories within the Caribbean.
  • The Greyhound Ambassadors introduce a Retired Greyhound Certificate which will contain background information including racing history and breeding details, when handed over an ex-racer to its new owner.
  • One of the most popular features of the whole year was our open race time check. In it, we took a huge sample of open races and isolated the fastest 10% and a midrange winning time for all track open races over all distances. The idea was to calculate whether a particular winning time gave you an average or excellent chance of winning an open.
  • For the first restricted field in more than three decades, Nottingham received 208 entries for their first Greyhound Derby. Withdrawals ensured that all 16 reserves beyond the 192 acceptors would all go to traps.
  • Britain’s newest Category One event, the George Ing St.Leger saw Roxholme Poppy produce the greatest run of her career. The track record breaker from the semi finals shaved a further 11 spots off her own personal best with a stunning 40.07 run. The meeting also featured the year’s most unusual photo from Steve Nash. Of the six runners in action, on Micks Little Gem (T6) is in touch with the sand
  • The Star Sports/ARC/LPS Greyhound Derby gets off to a smashing start as Skywalker Logan takes 11 spots off the track record with a 29.05 run. It was never bettered. The unluckiest runner in the round was Antigua Vows who failed by a head to qualify for the second round having clocked a calculated time of 2970 which would have been good enough to have won 15 of the 36 heats.
  • In Ireland, Ballymac Arminta (Ballymac Best-Coolavanny Angie, Nov 16) becomes the fastest bitch ever to grace Shelbourne Park’s 525 yard course with a 27.70 run.