With horse racing off for the foreseeable future it seems a good time to clear out the cobwebs from the part of my brain that used to find winners at the dogs.
It seems that greyhound racing may survive, albeit without a crowd, frankly a lot of greyhound racing is run without much of a crowd so not much change there.
But with greyhounds not needing an on site Doctor or A&E cover for racing accidents it seems likely that they can keep running.
Today I will recap how to read greyhound racing form and in the following days I’ll share some of the strategies I used to use back in the day.
The screenshot below comes from the excellent Racing Post greyhound app, you can find that here – https://greyhoundbet.racingpost.com/
Here’s how to read the card.
The Orange 5 is the trap that the dog will run from. 1 is nearest the inside rail 6 is at the outside. Some dogs need to be at the outside as they can’t get around the bends close to the rail, these dogs are indicated with a (W) next to their name. Orange is the colour of the jacket the dog will wear.
This dog is called Thailand Pearl and below her name we can see that she is a bitch (female) and black indicated by bk b.
Next are her sire and dam and in brackets (ssnsupp) indicates that here season has been suppressed, more on that in a later piece.
Below that we see that her best recent time was 25.05 and that was in a 3 dog trial on 19th February.
To the right of that line we see that her trainer is P Young.
And now we get into recent form with the last 5 races this bitch has run in.
Date = Date that the race or trial took place
Track = Track where the race took place
Distance = Distance of the race
Trap = which trap the dog ran from
Split = The sectional time. This is the time from the traps to the winning line the first time around
Bends = The position of the dog on each of the bends
Fin = Where the dog finished
By = If the dog won, how far it won by in lengths if it lost then how far behind the winner in lengths
Win/Sec == who won the race or if this dog won who came second
Remarks = The racing managers remarks about the run. In our example in the last run the dog was Slow Away, ran in the middle of the track, was bumped on the first bend and the race was hand timed.
WnTm = The time of the winner
Gng = an allowance set by the racing manager related to the days underfoot conditions. the allowance will be added or subtracted from the race times to give a calculated time. N equals normal, no adjustment
Weight = all dogs are weighed before each race, this is the dogs weight before the race
SP = the starting price
Grade = The grade of the races. Graded racing goes from 1, the best to 8, 9, 10 or more depending on the track.
Caltm = the calculated time for the run, this is the time plus or minus the going allowance.
So now you can read the card how do we find a winner, we’ll get to that in future articles.