Perry Barr
( Birmingham)
2 articles
Wimbledon | Catford | Oxford | Crayford | Portsmouth | Hall Green | Belle Vue | Ellesmere port | Kinsley | Swindon | Perry Barr | Newcastle Stadium | Brighton and Hove | Sittingbourne | Shawfield | Sunderland | Henlow | Yarmouth | Nottingham | Swansea | Glastonbury (Abbey Moor) | Pelaw Grange | Milton Keynes | Ayr | Poole
RUTHLESS gamblers are fixing dog races by feeding the greyhounds COCAINE, the News of the World can reveal. The drug stops dogs winning because it "fries" their brains, preventing them from running on top form, and crooked punters cash in by betting on the doped greyhounds to LOSE. There have been four cases of dogs testing positive for cocaine —and none of them finished first —but it is feared many more have gone undetected. In an exclusive interview, Noel Thompson, security co-ordinator for the National Greyhound Racing Council, said: "People are giving drugs to dogs which they know will stop them." Cocaine is a stimulant in humans, but when the drug is mixed in with a dog's food, its nervous system is overstimulated and the animal becomes disorientated. "A doped greyhound will often struggle to go round bends and lose vital ground," said Mr Thompson. "Certain drugs will take the edge off a dog." He added that the callous fixers are cruelly playing with the dogs' lives."They are giving them poison, because that's what drugs are," he said. "An overdose could kill a dog, just as it would a human being. "We know for sure a number of gambles have taken place involving a greyhound which later tested positive. Inevitably gambles have been landed on greyhounds that were not tested."
Around 10,000 dogs a year are tested and in 2005 up to 30 were found to be doped with drugs, including cocaine. The most recent cocaine case involved Dark Ranger at the Pelaw Grange track near Chester-le-Street in Durham last September. Both his trainer and kennel-hand were fined £1,000 and disqualified after the 7-4 chance finished third. Mr Thompson said: "It's unlikely that a dog is ‘got at' without a trainer or someone on the staff being involved. People are definitely trying to buck the system." He added: "Apart from cocaine, another big stopper is Cyclizine, the travel sickness pill. "Beta-blockers, heart drugs, chocolate and amphetamines have all been used on greyhounds, I believe." Another trainer, Andrew Gardiner, was severely reprimanded and fined £1,000 after his dog Emma The First was doped with beta-blocker Propranolol at Brough Park stadium, Newcastle upon Tyne, in October. And greyhound agent William O'Donoghue was reprimanded and fined £400 after theophylline, an asthma treatment, and caffeine were found in a urine sample taken from Kiel Sensation at Perry Barr, Birmingham, last July. Even the 2003 Greyhound Derby winner Droopys Hewitt tested positive for a painkiller in the third round of the competition, although the result was not known until after he had won the £75,000 final, two weeks later, when it was disqualified. Millions of punters bet on greyhounds in betting shops, at dog tracks every day and on TV worldwide. Annually greyhound racing generates a colossal £2.3 billion in off-course bets, and £87.5 million in Tote on-course bets at the UK's 31 tracks.
Online betting exchange Betfair—who offer punters the chance to gamble on greyhounds to lose races—has teamed up with the National Greyhound Racing Council to hound out the crooks. When Betfair spot suspicious betting patterns they alert NGRC investigators who launch an immediate probe. Mr Thompson says the sport's security squad is doing its "absolute best" to stop the dopers wrecking the country's second biggest gambling sport after horse-racing. He
added: "I think it is awful and disgusting for anyone to
dope greyhounds, and our stewards look at it in the same way |
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| News item from icBirmingham www.icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk | ||
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Wembley takes over at Perry Barr May 7 2003 By Richard Tyler, Birmingham Post After 12 years of piecemeal expansion, Perry Barr Greyhound Racing Club has agreed to a £4.2 million takeover by national dog track group Wembley in order to secure funding for the next stage of its development. One of the club's three directors, Maurice Buckland, who is also managing director of Birmingham engineering firm Victoria Precision, said the ground needed refurbishment, including new restaurant and bar facilities, which would cost around £2 million and was beyond the means of the club's existing shareholders. "This project requires a bigger institution to do it, that is the only reason why we are selling up," said Mr Buckland. "We decided the best thing for everyone was to let Wembley take over." He added the price offered by Wembley was a "fair reflection of the time and effort" put in by staff to build the club from scratch on land once used by Birchfield Harriers athletics club. The club's shareholders have expanded the facilities gradually, restoring the main stand and building a function room, corporate boxes and a restaurant. On peak Saturday nights the track attracts around 2,000 people. So far GRA, a Wembley subsidiary set up to handle the deal, has support from 91.6 per cent of the club's shareholders with the rest given until May 27 to make up their minds. Wembley finance director Mark Elliott said Perry Bar would be brought up to the standards race goers at its existing Birmingham race track at Hall Green have grown to expect. "With our track record we would expect to make a success of it," he said. Once the deal is completed, Wembley will have seven greyhound race tracks across the country. Letter from Greyhound Action to Birmingham Post The fact that the Greyhound Racing Association (GRA) will soon be running the track at Perry Barr ("Wembley takes over at Perry Barr", Birmingham Post, May 7) may not be such good news for the dogs. The GRA is unpopular even among greyhound racing enthusiasts because of the high rate of injuries to dogs on its tracks and, in the past 12 months or so, there were horrific accidents, resulting in the death of dogs, at the GRA tracks at Portsmouth and Belle Vue and another died of heat exhaustion in the kennels at Catford. The last time our investigators visited the other Birmingham GRA track, at Hall Green, they witnessed a dog (which was later put to sleep) being carried from the track screaming in agony after breaking a leg. It is quite commonplace for greyhounds to be put to sleep by vets at GRA and other major greyhound tracks, either because of injury or because they are not considered good racers. We estimate this happens to over 10,000 racing dogs in Britain every year. Unfortunately, whether or not the GRA runs Perry Barr, it will still be responsible for the deaths of about 500 greyhounds every year - taking into account its share of the demand for dogs to be bred to fuel the greyhound racing industry, and the fact that most of these dogs end up being put to sleep (or worse), either because they fail to make the grade as youngsters or when their racing days are over. To prevent this slaughter, we would like to see greyhound racing banned, as it is already in many parts of the USA. In the meantime, we are calling upon the public not to attend or bet on greyhound racing, so the dog race industry fades away through lack of financial support. |
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