“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ― George Orwell
The right to challenge authority and the rule of law is a fundamental right in a democracy.
In addition to reporting, accurately, informing, and hopefully entertaining, I have always considered the importance of challenging injustice as an integral part of mine or any other journalist’s profession.
It isn’t a role that will win you many friends, but better to be respected (hopefully) than liked. In my experience, people have short memories for the positive things that you write about them but can harbour resentment for years concerning anything negative.
Your critical observations about someone or something might be mentioned and forgotten. Mine are published.
Emotionally balanced folk respect that you have a job to do and are prepared to take the rough with the smooth providing that your reporting has integrity and balance.
If I have learned anything over the years, it is that there are often numerous sides to a story. And always at least two. Even when the excuse doesn’t justify the result, that may mitigate a poor decision. Better a stupid mistake than an evil one.
This isn’t a job for the thin skinned and I have had to write negative things about people who I like and respect.
There is no choice. Failure to do so is dishonest by definition.
Being prepared to call out ‘wrongs’ has cost me dearly over the years because more often than not, my biggest battles have been with important organisations and people in power.
That is hardly surprising.
If two trainers have a dispute, crack on.
If two tracks have a dispute – that might be interesting, or even entertaining.
The more serious problems often result over an imbalance, or abuse, of power.
If you are at the bottom of the pyramid – like it or not, that is where the owners and trainers find themselves – how do you fight your corner? Get justice? Get illogical or unfair decisions reversed?
Over the years, I have seen countless selfish, ill-advised, self-serving (my boss doesn’t like the word ‘corrupt’) or plain stupid decisions made by the upper echelons in this industry.
If not for journalists, who else is going to call them to task?
One of the fundamental challenges that the NGRC, NGRS, BGRF (that’s the Federation, not the Fund), BGRB and GBGB have had to determine since the sport’s earliest days has been – who are they there to serve?
The NGRC, which was funded by track owners, was set up to ‘independently’ monitor the integrity of the sport and enforce its rules.
In order to establish independence, they did so by employing the good and great of society, predominantly ex-military senior ranks. Proper chaps!
However, as we recently reported in Remember When, going back as far as the late 1940s, there was already conflict.
The tracks resented the NGRC (rules and regulations) for not favouring the NGRS (an equivalent of the Race Course Promoters Association) by not making life tougher for non-members.
Remember – we pay your wages!
That situation still partially exists – GBGB is funded by the Special Licence Fees paid by the tracks – though the promoters had to give up some of their power with the appointment of more independent directors – compared to the promoter laden BGRB.
GBGB may argue that they are the most balanced and fairest board ever – and there is plenty of merit in that claim, particularly given the evenhandedness of its CEO/MD since appointment.
A refreshing change – I might suggest!
That said, and I may be wrong, I still don’t recall any decision ever being made that would have been contrary to the wishes of the racecourse promoters.
However there are more fundamental differences between the modern GBGB and the old NGRC.
To polarise the difference, I would say, ‘the NGRC’s priority was the bookmakers; the GBGB’s priority is welfare’
And most of my beefs with the NGRC were born out of their subservience to the bookmakers.
As a kid my dad always told me, ‘the bookies have one commandment, thou shalt not win’ and the NGRC appointed themselves as the bookies enforcers.
Unfortunately, more often than not, that involved throwing trainers under the non-judicial bus, whether or not any cheating had actually taken place
Now, not for one minute am I putting trainers on a pedestal. Like the rest of society, they represent a cross section of failings and virtues. A gamut from honest, decent, caring and hard working, all the way through to complete wrong-uns.
However, it should be worth pointing out that during the sport’s darkest days, when weak kennelstaff and trainers might be bribed or blackmailed to do dishonest things, they were never the beneficiaries or masterminds.
From the doping gangs onwards, the only people who could ever really win big with a betting coup were crooked bookmakers.
Yet the NGRC bullied trainers and kennel staff.
As a kennel lad in the 1970s, there was still a ‘class’ element to the way the toffs at the ‘Club’ felt entitled to deal with the riff raff.
At stewards enquiries trainers were made to feel as though they had been caught poaching on the NGRC’s country estate.
‘That’s your final warning Jones. The next time you are in front of us, you’ll get a damn good flogging. Now away with you!”
That social structure even operated at kennel level.
I remember one of my fellow kennel staff being chastised by his trainer for daring to use his first name when the pair were cleaning the kennels on a Sunday morning.
“That is Mr Singleton to you”
“Of course. Now I’ll go and paddock those two dogs. . . .RANDY!”
The little whippersnapper – Graham Holland. Whatever became of him?
Unlike the courts, (“we are a private club”) the NGRC didn’t rely on ‘evidence’ to form a judgement.
It was irrelevant.
Were you the sort of chap likely to be up to shenanigans?
I remember once fighting Pat Rosney’s corner when they wouldn’t grant him a trainer’s licence simply because he was ‘an ex flapper’.
I remember arguing with the Senior Steward that they were contravening Pat’s human rights.
It was a complete blag on my part, but he did eventually get his licence.
How ironic that brother Pete has since been appointed a Stipendiary Steward.
Different kind of chaps, obviously!
But the bulk of my frustrations were over the NGRC’s misguided drugs strategy.
Their NGRC definition of a drug was ‘anything that couldn’t be attributed to normal feeding’ Quite where vitamins and supplements fitted in was anyone’s guess.
They pursued a ‘chromotography screening’ regime that was easily bypassed
They used an inadequate laboratory testing program that was entirely inadequate.
They prosecuted trainers based on flawed detection data and seemed oblivious to food chain positives.
Perhaps the ultimate indictment of the Club’s drugs policy concerned season suppressants.
For years, the only way to suppress a bitch – within the rules – was to administer male hormone, typically Laurabolin.
The ‘drug free sport’ encouraged trainers to use an anabolic steroid with side effects that included increased muscle and improved performances.
An added side effect was that it increased aggression and made many bitches more competitive and significantly faster. They gradually became emasculated and many started to develop male sex organs.
Even though many experienced trainers advocated the use of the kinder female hormone, they were fined if they were caught.
Until eventually, the authorities decided that Norethisterone, the most popular brand of female hormone, was actually the best option. Anybody using male hormone would now be fined.
The busybody journalist called the NGRC out – and was proved right!
If you study the GBGB Calendar for any period of time, it is quite obvious that the Board do not make protecting the betting industry as their primary objective.
The main reason for that is of course, the bookies don’t need protecting.
First and foremost, greyhound racing is largely a clean sport. Just as important, the bookies have worked a system whereby it is almost impossible for them to be caught by cheating at least significantly or in the long term.
Any kind of lumpy bet can be electronically traced within seconds and prices altered accordingly.
The system is so sophisticated that even a subtle attempt to systematically farm a cash crop over time is likely to see a trainer lose his contract. Good judges simply can’t get their money on.
Time finding enquiries are almost as irrelevant as they are infrequent.
Most GBGB inquiries relate to accidental, careless or reckless use of drugs and in that respect, the stewards have no choice.
But there is an angle to this that I fear goes totally over the heads of the stewards, most of whom might be academically qualified, but totalling lacking in industry nous.
So I will spell it out for them:
Every day, trainers are asked to make decisions that rely on their professionalism, integrity, knowledge, and luck. And by the way, this is obviously my exaggerated view of what a trainer is dealing with.
A trainer goes to the kennel. His top open racer is a bit slow to get off his bed and not eat his breakfast. Does he?
a) Withdraw him from Friday night’s final?
b) Not withdraw him, but lay him off on Betfair?
c) Take him for a £100 veterinary consultancy? “We would recommend tests – £250!”
d) Not take him, but hope the condition doesn’t deteriorate to a point of becoming ‘neglect’?
e) After how many hours does it become neglect?
f) Give the dog a mild tonic to help him recover – but risk a positive test?
g) Not give him a tonic – knowing that the dog would benefit from it.
Decisions are made and actions taken in understaffed conditions embracing a workload unimaginable even 20 years ago.
And these are the people being left with the sharp end of the welfare stick. Being asked to feed and board – for free – the ex-racers that the industry has no further use for but can’t re-home?
By the GBGB’s own figures, the number of dogs being retained by trainer/owner virtually doubled last year (25% v 12.8%).
Technically, of course, a greyhound trainer is not entitled to give the dog ‘veterinary treatment’. The law on even a qualified physio treating an animal is ‘obscure’ – though it is generally accepted that the vets bow to the greater expertise.
Yet how long would this game survive, if trainers didn’t treat dogs themselves instead of running to a vet every time they have an issue?
At the same time, trainers are expected to produce fit dogs able to give their absolute maximum.
But here is the great irony – most of the drugs being detected are not necessarily performance affecting.
Which brings us to the recent rash of Norethisterone positives.
A string of trainers are in the process of being fined for using a Norethisterone-type drug. It has transpired that they were imported products that were contaminated with other substances.
I fully understand why GBGB felt the need to act. Trainers should not be giving their dogs any medication not prescribed and issued by a registered vet.
However – I spoke to one respected trainer who told me that his usual supply of suppressants had been impossible to get. He was offered the alternative – all seemingly correctly presented and labelled with the assurance that it had originally been supplied by an Irish vet.
As anyone who has worked in kennels will tell you, messing around with a bitch’s oestrus cycle can be disastrous. The bitches usually lose condition and form, and it can take many months for them to recover.
This trainer gave the bitches the drug in the clear belief that he was acting in their best interests.
There was no possible other gain.
Would failing to give Norethisterone – albeit one that the local vet hadn’t added a 60-65% mark up have been a welfare issue in itself?
No cheating – but treated like cheats.
In my opinion, there was no need for a string of fines – a few cautions and reminders would have sufficed as it has for similar “mass” events in the past.
Finally, on my ‘crimes against trainers’ list of grievances, I refer to the stewards inquiries themselves.
Can it be fair that trainers are expected to conduct their own defence, or find the money for someone to defend them, when they are being prosecuted by a legally qualified GBGB expert?
I’m told that one GBGB director once asked that funding be put aside to allow trainers to have funded legal representation – only for a fellow director to quash it.
How long until somebody challenges the Board’s scientific adviser on ‘could lead to’ evidence, and asks about ‘likely to lead to’.
How long do we have to hear something that sounds like a Bear Grylls documentary ‘x substance can lead to kidney failure, blindness and death’ also ask, ‘is it not true that an excessive dose of Vitamin D has the same potential outcome?”
In keeping with an earlier statement of offering balance and fairness, I should add that the current GBGB disciplinary procedures are considerably improved on what they once were.
But they are still from infallible and appear some way behind the appeals procedure in terms of representation and fairness.
When they are – will I stop ranting? Probably not!
Editors Chair is an opinion article written by Floyd Amphlett who has been with the Greyhound Star since 1987. Floyd has experienced all of the major developments in greyhound racing for the past 40 years and maintains an enthusiastic interest in the progress and future development of the industry.
