'Chance favours only the prepared mind'... Louis Pasteur (1829-1895)

The future of dog racing?

Lord Lipsey, Chairman of the BGRB has given us a strategy for greyhound racing up until 2010. Everyone has been asked about their views: the stakeholders, the breeders, the promoters, the owners and the trainers. Everyone except, as far as I can see, the customers; the punters.

What do ordinary people, going to dog racing, have to say about how it will develop? What is their vision? What do they want to see happening?

I suggest that punters want to see a variety of races at their local tracks. Some tracks do try to put on hurdle races and handicap races but the vast majority seem to dole out the same fare week after week; except for the open race competitions.

By 2010 there needs to be a lot more tracks putting on hurdle and handicap races and I would like to see 8 dog races in order to make the pools better and make the races more competitive. Eight dog races would make it harder for the punters to pick winners but I think they would attract the public more; and there would be scope for different types of bets - it is a sport, yes, but it is also entertainment; and there are 8 dog races held in many countries now and I suspect that is because 6 dog races are too restrictive to form proper markets.

I believe that future stadiums will be multi- purpose enterprises. Look around any dog track and you will see that only a tiny proportion of the oval is occupied; vast stretches of valuable land all round unused. If the stadiums were used for other purposes on non-race days I believe facilities would be improved and entrance fees made cheaper for racing, allowing punters to go to more meetings.

How about covered indoor stadiums fitted out as multi-purpose for other sports? Not feasible? Nothing new seems feasible, until someone tries it…Think on the drama when the house lights go down in a heated covered stadium and the dogs chase a digital hare around the track in the glare of spotlights. A virtual hare? Fanciful? - Who knows? Your imagination can run riot; but I only raise these thoughts to try to get people thinking about what changes they would like to see within the sport. Dream on…

In conclusion to this article on dog racing where I have attempted to put other ideas on how to really look at a dog race in fine depth: I would like to see more people getting interested in what I have tried to put to newcomers and maybe some old hands at the game.

If my ‘plot the dogs graphs’ catch on how long will it be before the tracks have a graph in their greyhound programme; and perhaps someone will make an electronic hand-held one? Just punch the numbers in and, ‘Hey presto! I can assess the dogs’ performance!’ And there is the picture cell phone, which is very much at the centre of communications, that could deliver six tiny graphs through a website to your mobile phone at the track or betting shop.

At the very least, let me say that if I were a dog owner who leaves it all up to the trainer, I would be keeping my own records and graphs on how my dog was running, and what better way to do it than using my system of plotting the dogs? And it can be done using Microsoft Excel if you don’t want to do it drawing by hand.

Try it out and see how you get on; if you have made the graph correctly it can’t lie and it will add to your knowledge and hopefully you will get some pleasure out of it.

My last word on this blog is to say that I have had mixed reactions when I have shown my work to different people. I demonstrated it to young people at the dog track who were interested and enthusiastic (in fact one young guy won £40 on a trio using my cards - I would have been more pleased if it had been from using my graphs, but a win is a win…).

On the other hand I have been received with cynicism by an old hand at the game who thinks that it is too in depth and he picks four dogs quickly from a few lines of form for a ‘four- timer’ just for fun. He didn’t say how often he wins! Not many I’ll bet.

I give you these two illustrations to show that some people will embrace new ideas and others have no intention of changing their way of working; but if you have an inquiring mind I offer to you this mantra which I have written into all my betting notebooks:

‘Chance favours only the prepared mind’
Louis Pasteur (1829-1895)

I do not mind people copying my work for personal use; but not for commercial use.



Copyright G. Crawley 2006
Email: crawley1000@msn.com

Come racing!!