Wednesday night greyhound racing at Wentworth Park is a quiet affair. The silence is only punctuated by the whir of the mechanical rabbit spinning around the track, the flurry of the greyhounds footsteps and the relentless drone of country and western music.
“I can remember going to Wentworth Park and you couldn’t move before the TAB come in,” says Ron Johnston, an 86-year-old truck driver who lives across the road. “A lot of people don’t go now, if it’s raining and wet you’re not going to go down there, [it is] only the owners and trainers.”
Inside the stadium there are as many reporters as there are punters, because this occasion is the first race night at the track since New South Wales premier Mike Baird announced that the sport would be banned in the state next year. Before racing starts, a spokesperson for the Greyhound Breeders Owners and Trainers Association encourages the trainers to share their story with the journalists, sign a petition, and write letters to their local MP.
The inquiry commissioned by the NSW government that provoked the ban found that “around 10% to 20% of trainers” were engaged in the practice of live baiting, and that the wastage rate of greyhounds is “70% to 50%”.
Johnston used to train greyhounds. He stopped a few years ago, but admits he has used rabbits as live bait, and that “all the trainers” have done it.
“We did give them a rabbit, but that’s all,” he says. “Once the greyhound would grab the rabbit it would die, you know. I don’t believe in [live baiting with] cats and possums and things like that. I’ve never ever done that.”
Judith and John Richardson have been married for 51 years, and have raced greyhounds for the past 45. At their home in Dapto they have three pups, two racing dogs and two more in retirement. “We haven’t got the money to be horse trainers,” says Mrs Richardson. “You can race a dog, it can turn out here and it can be a champion.”
They Richardsons usually race at country tracks, but since the beginning of this year, they have been entering dogs at the races at Wentworth Park in Sydney. The Wentworth Park website says that it is “the most affordable and easiest code of racing to become involved in as an owner.”
As to the reasons for the ban, Mrs Richardson says: “I haven’t really seen a bad side of this industry.”
Rod Moon, a storeman and regular punter, says he is “disappointed” at the ban, which will come into force on 1 July 2017, but readily admits that live baiting is “disgraceful”.
“We’ve been resigned to [Wentworth Park] going, I’m surprised this didn’t go five years ago, maybe 10 years ago,” says Moon. “I feel sorry for the Gosfords, the Daptos and the Bathursts.”
Then there’s Bob Shirley, a 73 year-old semi-retired accountant, has sold tickets at the Wattle Street end for the past four years. He too says that live baiting is “disgraceful”, but adds that the trainers he knows are “terrific people” who “dote on their dogs”.
“It has to be properly policed,” he says. “If you know this is going on, you’ve got to become a dobber. It won’t be popular, of course, but there you go. If you want an industry, it has to happen.”
These are the “battlers” that have invested money and time into a sport that the NSW Labor opposition leader, Luke Foley, has called a “great Australian institution”. Foley has formed an unlikely coalition with the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party and the Reverend Fred Nile in opposition to the Baird government’s decision to ban greyhound racing.
Class has become a focal point in the debate. Foley has urged National party MPs to stand up to “elitist north shore liberals and inner-city Greens”, while Max Solling, a local historian, told ABC Radio: “There’s been a long history of dog racing being singled out for discriminatory treatment, both here and in Britain. The middle-class society particularly was always ready to attack greyhound racing.”
The Richardson’s greyhound, Ace I Am — named after the rapper Will.I.Am — finishes third in Race 7. John lets the dog out of the starting box, and Judith gathers it at the end of the race.
“What are we going to do?” says Mrs Richardson. “We can’t pack up and go to another state. We’ve got grandchildren, we’ve got our kids, what’s our life going to be? I don’t know what John and I are going to do.
“It will break our hearts if we have to stop racing.”
