After almost half a century in the greyhound game at Wimbledon Stadium, racing director H Edwards Clarke gave dog punters the benefit of his accumulated knowledge in 1989: The ability to run a curve is a more important quality than sheer speed. Although the majority of patrons will be making their way to the bar, the dedicated student will continue to watch what happens in the next 60 yards and note his card accordingly.
As H Edwards Clarke points out, ‘there may be a race result as soon as the dogs cross the line, but the dogs do not know it’, so vital clues to future prospects of staying longer distances or not may be gleaned from watching them all the way. Those who have made their greyhound racing most pleasant and profi table have invariably given infinitely more thought and consideration to the character and capabilities of the dogs that happen to occupy the traps than they did to the allocation of the traps themselves.
There are a great many dogs that do not fit neatly into the official grades. It is among these indeterminates that some of the best things from the punter’s point of view are to be found.’ So, it is worth spotting dogs running below their potential ability.
