IT’S Dog Day Afternoon at Swindon on Good Friday next week when Swindon host the BAGS/SIS Easter Bunny grand finals meeting - all nine of them - and before you run away with the idea that Gaming International have converted the track into a drive-in movie park fear not, the dogs will have pride of pace in betting shops nationwide with no horseracing taking place on the Holy day.
Better of course to go along to the meeting if you can, admission won’t cost you a bean and you will be treated to some exciting racing with those finals run over the sprint, standard and stayers’ distances, something to suit all tastes then.
The meeting is the climax to a seemingly unending series of qualifying races but the big day has come, almost, and each of those nine finals will carry a winner’s prize of £750, making the total purse for the meeting around the £12,000 mark for a competition which, by the end of it all, will have seen £100,000 going to some satisfied owners and trainers.
Students of form, either at the track or in the betting shops, will have the assistance of price guides for all races with the bookmakers expected to price up each and every race, possibly in advance of finals day.
Better to concentrate don’t you think on the live stuff, proper racing as it is affectionately known, rather than the Walt Disney-type productions that are Millersfield, Thunder Alley and Portman Park etc, etc, etc . . . zzzzzzzzz!
OUTGOING Hove trainer Brian Clemenson, who quits his post at Hove on March 31 (see story on News & Comment) told it how it is in this week’s Inside Track feature in the Racing Post penned by Richard Birch.
We are getting tired of folk telling us that the game is on the up, citing the number of relatively new initiatives on BAGS for example as the reason for a resurgence of the sport, truth is there is no resurgence, just ask all those trainers out there contemplating their futures.
Clemo contemplated this and decided enough was enough and when asked by Birchy if greyhound racing was on the up he fired back with the line “No, it’s changing for the worst, quantity prevails over quality in all areas of the sport.”
Does anyone remember the good old days when tracks were restricted to two eight-race meetings a week?
King to quit Swindon at end of month
‘IT’S alright for those trainers who have a BAGS contract, they’ve no need to worry where the next penny’s coming from’ is the the sort of line trotted out only too often these days by trainers with no such contract and even more so by those with no track attachment either.
Being a greyhound trainer at present is not the most enviable of occupations, it’s pretty grim out there just now, and the big worry is that there is little sign of things turning round, no matter how much is thrown at the game in the form of prizemoney, such as in the ongoing BAGS Championship.
None of that money trickles down to the majority of trainers and it certainly was no incentive to Swindon trainer Steve King to change his mind about leaving the sport, despite the fact that he is attached to a BAGS track, Swindon.
. . . and solo man is sweet on his chances
STUART MASON doesn’t have a track at which to hang his hat, the Wakefield-based trainer is unattached as they say in this business, and that is precisely how he will be when he drives to Doncaster on Wednesday for the BETDAQ Premier League Greyhounds, he is going it alone with a team of runners picked entirely from his own kennel.
And you can mark the Mason camp down as one of the more likely dark horses for the event, even though he did at one stage contemplate teaming up with another trainer. “I thought about it but then thought again, wait a minute, I’ve enough good dogs here and I’m confident they’ll do a job for us,” he said.
Several of Mason’s STT Team hounds were put through their paces in trials at Donny on Friday and the trainer was pleased with their performances, particularly that by Granard Bound’s 29.54sec. “We’ve had some trouble with the dog, he had a very nasty chest infection which kept him off for some time but he appears to have recovered well and I fancy he’ll go well.
Owners’ bonus series set for October launch...
FOLLOWING the recently announced British Greyhound Racing Fund budget increases, the Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB) is pleased to launch the Owners’ Bonus Series, which gets under way next week with the first competition due to take place at Belle Vue on Wednesday (5th October). The initiative, developed by the Board’s Racing Committee, is scheduled to take place between October 2011 and December 2012 and is expected to be funded to the tune of £1 million.
Each of the 25 GBGB-licensed racecourses will stage a total of 26 Owners’ Bonus Series competitions, comprising heats and a final, for 12 or 18 graded greyhounds. The winner of each final will receive £500 plus a trophy and presentation jacket with other finalists receiving £100 and a further £100 going to the winning trainer.
The total prize fund for each final totals £1,100 and the standard prize money, saved by the track not funding a race of the grade of the final itself, will be added back into graded prize money as increased run and/or win money across the card at a subsequent meeting.
Sunday night specials to continue...
SITTINGBOURNE’S big and much appreciated (especially by trainers) effort in putting on top class racing during their experimental Sunday night BAGS meetings paid off handsomely yesterday when BAGS informed the Medway town track that they are keen to continue with the meetings through to 18 December.
At a time when promoters are experiencing tough times attendance-wise it is excellent news for Sittingbourne, who will now be on three BAGS meetings a week until the end of the year. They threw a considerable amount of their BAGS income at Sunday night prizemoney and have got the reward they deserve.
“This is what we’ve been aiming for and been working hard at,” said racing manager, Jess Packer, yesterday. “We pumped a lot of money into prizemoney and it’s worked for us, it’s very good news for the track.
Bookies to consider options to extend experimental Sunday evening meetings...
THE experimental Sunday evening BAGS meetings at Poole and Sittingbourne have been given a one week extension for this Sunday, thus giving the bookmakers’ fixture compilers the option to continue Sunday evening racing indefinitely at the two venues.
BAGS are due to hold a meeting this week to decide whether or not to push on with the meetings and a yes vote would be great news for the two tracks, but all will depend on the feedback they are compiling and assessing from betting shops.
The meetings were initially introduced as a suck it and see experiment and the encouraging news is that “due to demand from some bookmakers” – BAGS terminology, not ours – the meeting will go ahead and a decision made at their London offices within the next couple of days.
Owners and trainers give a big vote of confidence to BAGS experiment...
IT was a case of déjà vu at Sittingbourne on Sunday night where, following the previous Sunday’s open race extravaganza, the ‘house full’ signs were posted in the restaurant and, while it wasn’t exactly shoulder to shoulder out on the terraces, it was a sizeable throng nevertheless.
There has been a great buzz at the Medway track these past two Sundays, with owners and trainers, not necessarily those in the higher echelons of their profession, grateful, no make that delighted, that the meetings have provided them with plenty of opportunity to run their greyhounds in opens.
And the Sittingbourne racing office staff have certainly done their bit in catering for all tastes by advertising opens over all distances - they raced over six distances on Sunday! - and nobody has complained about the quality of entry.
THE Bookmakers’ Afternoon Greyhound Service (BAGS) have donated a welcome and much-needed £75,000 to the Retired Greyhound Trust (RGT) which, like most sides of greyhound racing just now, is finding the economic climate difficult to cope with.
“The donation is to help the Trust to boost its fund-raising profile during a tough time for the charity,” says the GBGB, and it is equally welcomed by those dedicated kennel hands who spend much of their time, many voluntarily, seeking homes for greyhounds.
This contribution from BAGS follows on the back of the £100,000 prizemoney they donated to the BAGS/SIS Championship, a competition for graded dogs running at BAGS tracks and which is reported to be highly popular with the participating stadia, and owners and trainers.
TOM KELLY'S appointment as full-time chairman of the British Greyhound Racing Fund (BGRF) and the recent appointment also as a board member of Ladbrokes’ greyhound top dog, Gordon Bissett, has sent mixed messages through the sport.
That both have dyed-in-the-wool bookmaker CVs and will now have significant input on how and where fund money is allocated is being frowned upon by certain sections within the industry, including Bob Betts, former greyhound editor of the Sporting Life.
In the current edition of Ireland’s Sporting Press he expresses concern over prizemoney. He states: "It is now extremely unlikely that any extra cash from the expected £7m fund budget this year will be allowed to go to prizemoney... it means the bookmakers now have virtual control of the sport's purse strings."
|
RSS Feed