The knock-out punch is the one you don’t see coming
Last week’s announcement that Oxford is due to commence racing on August 26 was more or less expected.
Kevin Boothby has decided that the track will immediately race two (or three) times per week. How many of those will be ‘betting shop’ meetings is unclear.
The big unknown is whether SIS is willing (or legally able) to shift some of the Central Park’s meetings to Oxford prior to the end of 2022. Either way, by January 1, all five weekly fixtures will be at SIS tracks.
Assuming Oxford are staging three meetings per week in the next couple of months, it remains to be seen where the 250+ greyhounds are coming from.
The pressure on ‘available runners’ was already critical and has been ratcheted up with the introduction of the ‘four day rule’. Harlow have been particularly badly hit and have lost fixtures despite having some of the busiest dogs in the business.
But the cracks are appearing everywhere. There was a time when a track producing a meeting with three empty traps could look forward to a bollocking from BAGS.
Now it is quite common to see seven or eight at a meeting. Many races are now graded for five dogs with no cover, often leading to four-runner events. And we are not talking about ‘non-shop’ meetings. There are only a handful of those anyway. We are often talking of prime betting shop slots.
It is perhaps worth noting though, that greyhound racing is not the only sport struggling. The situation is arguably worse in horseracing.
It isn’t a sport that I follow, but in preparation for this article, I spotted a meeting a Bath last week where the FIVE races had fields of 6, 4, 3, 4, 4.
But if UK greyhound racing is bracing itself for the left jab of an extra track joining the ranks, has it prepared for the right uppercut coming from across the water?
Ireland is running out of greyhounds and nobody is more acutely aware than the tracks themselves.
There is an estimated shortfall, according to one well placed industry insider, of around 1,000 greyhounds currently available for racing in Ireland.
There appear to be three main reasons for the shortage:
1) Much of it was inevitable given the 16% decline of breeding during the height of the pandemic in 2020. That then fed into the drop in ‘namings’ last year, 10,583 from 13,284.
When you think that in 2021, GBGB registered 6,789 greyhounds, you can see how tight the numbers are getting. Although litter numbers rallied last year, they were still below 2019 levels and are showing no signs of a bounce for the first six months of 2022 (1,306 matings compared to 1,343 a year ago).
2) The increase in prize money and trainer contracts in Britain during the last two years has seen a sharp increase in demand for the dogs. Instead of half a dozen races, dogs are being sold off much sooner. The cost of greyhounds has increased significantly and owners are selling on at such a rate that some transporters are apparently making two trips per week, double what they would normally be doing.
3) The actions of the GRI are also playing a role. I was given three main gripes: a) a proliferation of greyhound sales at Irish tracks. b) a track staff shortage at some tracks meaning trainers are struggling to book races and trials, and c) the introduction of a traceability App. This automatically prevents owners entering dogs in there are any queries on their runners, or recently sold hounds. Many of Ireland’s ageing owner population can’t work the technology, they don’t even have smart phones, and “can’t cope with the hassle, so are getting out of the game”.
So while tracks like Kilkenny and Clonmel are ‘flying’, Thurles is not, with Midlands tracks Mullingar and Newbridge also apparently under the cosh. Mullingar and Youghal would be seriously in the mire but for SIS – I am told. I gather there is also an edict from GRI that as entries fall, tracks should consider less races rather than running with empty traps.
My highly respected source is anticipating track closures before the end of the year – which is something that might not entirely displease the Irish Government.
The bottom line is, none of these issues are going to improve any time soon. The most critical in the short term for the UK tracks, is the unsustainable level of Irish exports.
Don’t worry – British breeding will come to the rescue!
As a lifelong supporter of British breeding, I would love to see its renaissance. It is irrefutable that it matches Ireland in terms of quality, if not quantity. In fact, there is a hugely powerful argument to suggest that ‘litter for litter’, the British crop over the last two years should prove significantly superior.
However – let’s get real.
There were 185 British registered litters born in 2021 compared to 2,160 registered in Ireland. Less than 8% of the total.
If every single British pup survived illness and injury and went on to race, they would make around 17% of the total. In reality, it will be closer to 10%.
It will surprise many that this wasn’t always the case. For a decade between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, British breeders consistently produced more than 1,000 litters per year. In fact, precisely 40 years ago, when the NGRC registered 7,841 dogs for racing, no fewer than 3,262 (41.6%) of them were British bred.
Starting tomorrow it would take many years to get back to those levels.
So for all the discussions about the effect of Oxford, the Four Day Rule and even injuries rates, they are just the reducers. It will be the right uppercut of an imminent lack of greyhounds that we should all be worried about.
The Times’ Chief Sports Writer Simon Barnes coined the famous Bodyline series as ‘Cricket’s oldest whinge’.
I have a theory that greyhound racing’s longest whinge has been resolved. And it crept into the industry almost unnoticed in the early July GBGB Calendar
I am talking about the GBGB drug screening info. In other words, the length of time during which laboratories can detect the presence of drugs in greyhounds.
It is something that I have always hoped would be made available to trainers – but I didn’t expect to live that long.
The significance of this is huge, and undoubtedly my biggest ever gripe with the old NGRC and BGRB.
For many years I complained that there was no list of accepted medications that trainers could use between races without incurring the wrath of the stewards.
It was bizarre that administering substances like Vaseline could see a trainer fined. Nor were they allowed to use the female hormone to suppress season.
(Ironically, for many years they did allow the use of male hormone and the effect was similar to the one on the female Eastern European shotputters.)
Yep – anabolic steroids, whose side effects were as much about increasing competitiveness as much as building muscle, were perfectly acceptable.
Happy time finding everyone! Eventually, Gordon Bissett headed an inquiry which introduced an acceptable ‘first aid kit’
However the paranoid stewards wtill refused to produce a list of ‘acceptable substances’ that trainers could feed. There was no provision even for giving vitamins or iron supplements – even though trainers regularly used substances like ascorbic acid, yeast, seaweed powder, Pexatone and other tonics.
In fact the policy was so anally retentive that the rules makers couldn’t even bring themselves to use the word ‘drugs’ They referred to ‘any substance that could not be considered as part of ordinary feeding’ – whatever that was.
(What if a trainer could prove that a ‘substance’ that he used was not technically a drug? How could you possibly fine and humiliate him?
Well technically they could – because they were the NGRC, which is a private club and they make up their own rules even during the course of an enquiry.
The disgraceful practise of bending, ignoring or dismissing evidence carried on through to the early days of GBGB when a prehistoric brand of ex-coppers would revert to whatever sharp practice was necessary to produce ‘a nick’.) Thankfully we have moved on. . .
As for the idea of informing trainers how long a drug could be forensically detected in the greyhound’s body, but having no clinical effect whatsoever . . . .
I can’t remember the exact wording – but the former Head of the NGRC Frank Melville once suggested to me that revealing detection periods was practically ‘teaching trainers how to cheat’.
So credit where its due. I can detect Duncan Gibson’s fingerprints all over this change of policy, ably supported by the Aussie science on which we so frequently lean.
And to think I lived to report it. Phew!
Just one final thought though, with the admission that Meloxicam is detectable for 18 days. I wonder how much money is owed to trainers for the return of inappropriate fines? On dozens of occasions they were found guilty of breaching the ‘7 day rule’ – when they claimed that that they had stopped treating an injury a week early, only to be penalised on the grounds of vicarious liability by the stewards and so called veterinary ‘expert’?
