Corruption in British Greyhound Racing

[Garf79]

In the UK greyhound racing has been pretty popular for many decades now, races can draw in fairly big crowds and the top events many thousands of spectators come to watch. This post links into my horse racing posts and it will mainly focus on how prize money effects race outcomes. In the Uk the prize money paid to dog owners and trainers can vary a lot, the top race in the UK is the English Greyhound Derby and the winner of the Derby gets £150,000. Most other races though only have a prize pool of a few hundred pounds and despite dog owners getting a share of gate receipts this often does not cover the full cost of getting dogs fit and ready at a race track to race! So where do the dog owners and trainers get extra income from? I mean know one is going to do this for very long making a loss week after week are they?

                                            

Gambling, it may not seem fair and their are plenty of regulations in place to try and stop or limit who can bet on dogs but it is virtually impossible to stop it. Trainers and dog owners make extra income from gambling and this inevitably brings some degree of corruption and sometimes it will involve multiple dog owners and trainers in the same race. This is obviously done clandestinely, meaning they do not want to get caught and not many people actually know what is going on. If they get caught there can be big fines and possibly even imprisonment.

So How Do Dog Owners Swing Races?

Over the years there have been many incidents of race fixing in the UK and some are easier to spot than others, in 2010 there was a big scam going on that involved giving dogs banned substance to improve performance but this was easily spotted by checking the dogs urine samples an blood, the people involved got a big fine. Some of the harder to spot methods involve feeding the dog a massive meal just before the race, or over watering the dog. It is hard to win a race with a full stomach or a bladder filled to bursting point.

One of the most common methods though used today is simply not to train your dog and owners simply let their dogs get lazy and lie around all the time. This often happens when a dog has had a patch of good form and it has been ranked high so the odds are low and probably favorite for the race. Then the owners or trainers simply let the dog become lazy for a month or 2 before its next race and the dog comes to the track in poor shape and is beaten by a dog with much higher odds and you can bet your last Euro that the trainers will be in the know and have bet on the dog that wins with the higher odds.

So where am I going with this post? Not 100% sure myself but I just want to make everyone aware on the Alpha Forum that often in smaller races with low prize money they can be corrupt. These smaller races are where the people behind the greyhounds make their extra income. So I guess what I want to let you know either be it on horses or greyhound racing always check the prize money as it could be a key indicator to who will win the race.