Tonight, Newcastle stage the final of a Category One four bend competition that only attracted 33 of the required 36 entries – and 27 of them were locally trained hounds.
On Saturday Oxford stage an event with a Roll of Honour littered with Derby winners and a near 90-year legacy. Unusually these days, It was oversubscribed, yet they still had to delay entries for the final night supporting card.
On the same night, Hove stages their two biggest races of the year. Despite the quality of the venue and circuit, the £20K first prize for one of the events, and the fact that both are now 36 runner events . . . one closed with the bare minimum of entries, the other with a surplus of three.
(Does it seem so long ago, that it was a relief to make the 48?)
One further point, look at the supporting cards of all three finals meetings. All are awash with locally trained runners.
To take the most famous line from Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting – ‘It’s not your fault’.
Having spoken to slightly apologetic GMs and RMs on countless occasions when competition entries have not been up to scratch, they tend to take these things personally. As though their track is being judged.
You also hear excuses tinged with blame. The one that has been knocking around this week is ‘it is the GBGB’s fault for sanctioning the three Category One events at the same time.’
I disagree.
The distance between Newcastle and Oxford is around 250 miles. The trek between Newcastle and Hove is around 350. But there is more to it than that.
While it is true that Hove and Oxford are geographically closer, their race distances aren’t. How many dogs capable of winning the 450m Pall Mall might have been entered for the 515m Sussex Cup?
Looking at the Pall Mall finalists, I guess possibly (!) two, and both would have been big odds over the additional 65 metres. And that doesn’t include the intrepid Heilbron runner who has swerved his local comp for the more suitable Cowley ‘450’.
In my view there are a series of other factors affecting entry numbers for major races
The first taxi off the rank is ‘numbers’
Now I am aware that a section of readers don’t appreciate my ‘bringing up the old days’, but I believe that history’s greatest benefit is to teach us lessons.
Go back 20 years and there were eight Cat One finals in the month of July. This year there were only five and that included the Champion Hurdle.
So it isn’t as though we are awash with events.
No, I am talking about the number of available greyhounds. There were twice as many greyhounds being registered by GBGB during that era.
In the five year period between 2002 and 2006, there were between 10,100 and 11,900. Last year, GBGB registered 5,899.
So getting on towards twice as many dogs. If the top 5% are open racers, you are dealing with half as many competitive dogs, either to be entered, or feature at the business end of the competition.
What’s more those numbers were more evenly spread due to the number of tracks.
I doubt that Hove would have been scratching around to fill their supporting final card if they had Milton Keynes, Reading, Wimbledon and Walthamstow open racers to call on.
Similarly, how many trainers from Hall Green, Belle Vue, Coventry and Shawfield would have entered at Newcastle?
How much is prize money a factor?
Prize money must be an issue. In July 2004, the feature event was the Reading Masters, worth £20K to the winner. Index linked, that would be £37,600 today.
Romford’s Champion Stakes was worth £10K then. It is still worth £10K. Allowing for inflation, that should be £18,800.
Brian Clemenson’s Ballybrazil Hero collected £6,000 for winning the 2004 Sussex Cup. It is now worth £10,000 when it might be worth £11,283. The supporting Cat 2 sprint finals were each worth £2,500. This year’s Sussex Sprint is worth £3,000.
But there is more to this than the winner’s prize.
I recently asked Rab McNair why he hadn’t entered runners for the £12,500 Grand Prix at Sunderland. He pointed out that the dog running off scratch in a graded handicap would pick up more than his runners would for making the 600-mile-around trip.
I can imagine owners and trainers taking all this on board and feeling peeved.
But it is only fair to offer the flip side.
As a magnification of the issue, I will refer to a fact that I have raised previously.
When De Lahdedah crossed the winning line to win the Derby Final, promoter Kevin Boothby was entitled to only a fraction more media rights payment than Dave Barclay would have collected for staging a Harlow D5 almost exactly 24 hours earlier.
The bookmakers don’t care. It’s a product, with a price.
‘Spend it how you like. Ideally we would like better quality racing, but are we really that bothered? Should we be?”
Could ARC justify paying £200 for also-rans in the heats of the Grand Prix? They certainly couldn’t force a supplemental cost on the bookmaker.
They could give it a whirl, but . . realistically?
Are there solutions?
In my view, prize money needs to be considered as an overall package and divvied out accordingly. The dog that won the D5 at Harlow was born to be a Derby winner.
The Derby needs to be staged. So do all the Cat One races. There have to be incentives to breed and own greyhounds though this isn’t simply a ££ issue.
In Britain or Ireland, only an idiot would buy a greyhound to make money.
I remember talking to an owner who had won the Monmore Gold Cup a few years earlier. He couldn’t remember how much the race was worth, but he happily recalled the day, the excitement, his ante post bet and the reflected glory.
He still had the trophy and presentation jacket. and had kept the video of the race and his interview on SKY.
There is still the issue of competitive racing. Where you are not looking at 33/1 bar three in the ante post betting. How do you avoid a litany of 4/9 shots when 30 of the 36 runners are local graders?
When I first suggested fewer Cat One races, Mark Wallis almost swallowed a freshly lit Benson & Hedges Superking (or whatever it was called).
Owners and trainers are never going to want fewer lucrative opens, so how do you sweeten the pill? Or at least minimise internal fag burns.
I suggest that you drastically improve the prize money for Cat One events. Not just the winner’s prize, but the qualifiers too.
You also further reduce competition size. Cat One races are reduced to 24 runners. Each heat is worth £1,000 to the winner, £3,000 for a semi and a minimum of £25K to the winner.
Every one of the new Cat One races is broadcast on a new TV Channel with supporting media coverage, interviews, website previews, videos etc.
You also manufacture more superior one-off opens – a little like the Australian ‘Free for all’ races – where the top hounds are rewarded accordingly.
How is it funded? By putting the money aside from the overall prize money fund, something that would be very achievable if the ‘single service’ media rights deal is ever realised.
Is there a better plan? Probably. But whatever it looks like, it must surely incentivise connections of the elite greyhounds to want to compete against each other on a regular basis.
Letter to the Editor:
Tracks get publicity some good some not so good, But on Saturday night at Romford we had one of our American
owners over to watch her team of 3 She’s from Arizona a long way to watch 3 graded races, I know some folk that won’t travel an hour without moaning.
She was working in Denmark but diverted her trip home to come racing at Romford, and I can honestly say Romford made her feel so special they pulled out all the stops gifts, more gifts presented a trophy had photos with her greys on the podium, She was overwhelmed, She has over 15 greys racing in the States 4 over here and she couldn’t believe how good we do things here for our greys/owners etc, That blow myself away Really ! I think the GBGB should make her our overseas ambassador ?
anyway always a pleasure to share a good news story, She’s now on the plane waiting to fly home.
Glen Harrison
I’m sure some of you must have spotted this on social media. . .
Apart from it being the Savannah Bananas Race, which sounds like something Kevin Boothby would stage at Towcester, I couldn’t help think about the tremendous gambling opportunities available.
Gear up three on artificial colours and additives for an all ways tricast, and double-Calpol the rest . . .
“Editors Chair is an opinion column 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.”
