The Dogs

A Personal History of Greyhound Racing

Add to cart

US$ 11.99

(If any tax is payable it will be calculated and shown at checkout.)

Preview (read now) Add to my own site Buy multiple copies Give this ebook to a friend Add to my wishlist Author's page Publisher's page

Print & copy permissions

Supported devices

Greyhound racing is the second most popular spectator sport in Britain (after football), but to outsiders it has remained a mystery. The Dogs opens this world to us, explaining the history from its beginnings, its heyday and its problematic future, as well as unravelling the intricacies of the sport: how to tell a good sprinting dog from a staying one, the pristine logic of the racecard, and the unpredictability which can throw any race into disarray. The daughter of a dog owner Laura Thompson was fascinated by the sport from an early age, captivated by the worldly elegance of the stadia and enraptured by the unearthly beauty of the dogs. She catches the elusive, unique nature of the champion greyhounds, from all-time greats like Mick the Miller and Pigalle Wonder to her father's beloved Commutering. She looks at the addictiveness of gambling and describes the different characters who stand at the trackside, the dog men. The Dogs takes us around the stadia, the kennels and the unlicensed 'flapping' tracks into the heart of greyhound racing, vividly evoking its magic and the glamorous heat of Derby night at White City, the shine of pride and affection in the eye of a dogman, and the punters' belief that they can foretell, even manipulate, the future. At a time when greyhound racing's place in sporting culture is under renewed threat, this informative, funny and moving account shows how it can capture and keep our deepest affection. less

High Stakes Publishing; December 2009
225 pages; ISBN 9781848397323
Read online, or download in secure PDF format
Title: The Dogs
Author: Laura Thompson

Buy, download and read The Dogs (eBook) by Laura Thompson today!

Excerpt

The simple facts are these. Six greyhounds run around an ovoid track in pursuit of a mechanical hare. The hare always wins. It is the mystery of what will come second that fascinates those who go to the dogs. The greyhounds wear jackets whose colours, like jockeys' silks, help one to separate a dog from the tangled knot, the brief blur of bodies: trap one-red; trap two-blue; trap three-white; trap four-black; trap five-orange; trap six- black-white stripes. But only in gambling extremis is a greyhound just a number. They have names, they have identities, they have characters, and they have histories: these, too, help to separate them from the tangled knot. Six nights a week and six (sometimes seven) afternoons a week, every week of the year, people are going to the dogs and betting on the dogs. About £250 million a year is gambled on the dogs on-course, at the tracks, and about £2,100 million a year is gambled off-course, in the betting shops. Almost every day of the year, at least ten greyhound tracks stage meetings that may comprise as many as thirteen races. Almost every day of the year up to 1,000 greyhounds will be put into tiny traps to wait, scrabbling and howling, for the hare to make its circuit, for the moment when it will pass the traps, when the doors will be snapped open and they can spring out after it. Every year in Britain alone around 70,000 greyhound races are run; every year, dogs are put into those traps over four hundred thousand times. What other sport gives itself to its public in such continuous abundance? There are no seasons in greyhound racing, no rests from the world. The dogs never closes. Most of the 70,000 or so annual races in Britain are run for a winner's prize of around £100 by dogs of ordinary ability over one circuit of the track. These are known as graded races. The vast majority of greyhounds are graders. Until the late 1970s, the calibre of a graded race was gauged by the amount of prize money that it offered; now, however, races are graded by number, usually from one to nine, with nine being for pups and scrubbers, one for fliers. It is the track's racing manager who decides what grade of race a dog should run in. He also has to assign, as well as is possible, the right dog to the right trap. Some greyhounds, no one really knows why, like to run on the inside, close to the rails, while others-known as wide runners-like to be on the outside, clear of the other dogs. The racing manager will draw a railer in trap one or two and a wide runner in trap five or six, but the problems come with traps three and four, the 'death' traps, in which, unless a dog is rather lucky or rather superior, it may find itself impossibly sandwiched between two thick chunks of greyhound. A racing manager who draws a dog continually in either of these traps will be accused by its owner of pursuing a vendetta, while he who draws a dog too often in trap one or six will be accused by the other five owners of favouritism. His is a complicated and thankless task. It cannot be otherwise; for it is of the essence of greyhound racing that too many dogs should be attempting to negotiate a too sharply shaped track. Otherwise the fastest dog would win every time; and where would that leave everyone? Some tracks practise handicap racing, often with eight dogs. The traps are staggered as in an athletics event, which means that, in theory, each greyhound gets a clear run. Handicapping is still relatively rare in Britain. It is far more common in Australia, where at least eight, and sometimes as many as ten, dogs compete in each race-the best racing manager in the world could not get that many dogs running smoothly from level traps. In truth, handicapping is a fairer system than the bumping, scuffling, shut-your-eyes-and-pray-your-dog-made-it-round-the-bend one that operates at the majority of British tracks. But greyhound racing is a traditionalist sport, and it remains loyal to the imperfect but trusted method of racing that it has always known. A few tracks are, nonetheless, so tight and sharply bended that decent racing is almost impossible. They vary considerably in shape and size, but an average race, of a little over one circuit, is about 470 metres. This takes something less than thirty seconds to cover and is the distance that most greyhounds have been bred to run; known as four-bend races, these are denoted by an A in a race programme (for example, A1, A9). Rarer than these are the 'S' races, the six-benders, run over 1¾ circuits of the track, races of about 650 metres and forty seconds. Six-bend dogs are preferred by wiser owners, because they give you more of a run for your money. They can be drawn in trap three, miss their break from the traps, fill a greyhound sandwich for half a minute and still win a race; whereas if a four-bend dog doesn't get out and away pretty smartly, then as often as not it might as well, as my father puts it, 'be running against spaniels'. Rarer yet than the six-bend races are sprints, races of about 250 metres and fifteen seconds, for dogs which spurt and fizzle like fireworks; middle distance races of about 550 metres and thirty-five seconds; marathons of about 800 metres and fifty-three seconds; and hurdle races. These times are extremely rough estimates-the difference between a scrubby and a classy dog can be two seconds or more. But however slow a greyhound might be, it is still effortlessly fast compared with a human athlete. Even an A9 dog will run at something approaching forty miles an hour.