Greyhound Racing: How to Read a Scorecard (Part 1)
It is a clear starry night in Yorkshire, England, and what better way to spend it than “A Night at the Dogs”. So you head over to Kinsley Greyhound Stadium, and upon entering, you receive a rather strange piece of paper with boxes and numbers and strange
names such as Top Awards and Eyes A Handful. What do these strange markings mean? Are they a military code? Or some sort of spy operation? Fortunately, no, this is a simple scorecard, which tells the holder which Greyhounds are running in which races on the
day.
It also gives other useful information, such as the dog’s number, class, and starting gate. But what means what? All questions regarding the scorecard will be discussed in this article.
First of all, you need a scorecard, which can be found http://www.greyhound-racing-student.co.uk/_common/images/greyhounds.gif. This particular card shows the statistics for the Greyhound racing from Trap 1. Each program for a race will have six of these cards, one for each trap that the dog is running from. Now, first to the left you see a large, colored number, in this case,
a red “1” in a red box. This denotes the “trap” or gate that the Greyhound ran from.
Next to the number, in large capital letters, is the name of the Greyhound that is running, in this case “DANS DAYDREAM.” To the right of the dog’s name, in the center of the card, is the owner of the Greyhound, “Mr. C. Wilson.” At the end of that row, on
the right of the card is the name of the trainer, “C. Duggan.” Below the trainer’s name is the age and breeding information of the Greyhound, which is usually not a big factor in the outcome of the race, unless of course an old dog is running against younger
ones.
At the far left of the card is a list of dates, which refer to the previous six races of the particular dog, with the most recent first. In this case, Dan’s Daydream ran his last race on the 28th of March. Next to the dates is a list of the lengths
of the race in meters, abbreviated as “Dis” for distance. The “Tp” to the right of the distance refers to the trap that the Greyhound ran from.
The “STm/Hcp” is Split Time and Handicap abbreviated. Split time means how long it took for the Greyhound to reach the finish line. In the case of multiple laps, the total time is divided by the number of laps to achieve an average time. If the dog is handicapped,
then the time is not shown, but instead the length of a start or if the Greyhound was scratched. For example, if the dog received a start of 11 meters, then the scorecard would read “R11.” If the dog was scratched, or started off late, then it will read “Scr.”
Next is “SPl” which stands for splits. This is a series of four numbers that tells the position of the dog at each bend in the track. In the case of the first race, it states “5532.” This means that Dan’s Daydream rounded the first two corners in fifth place,
the third in third, and the fourth in second. The “Fin” next to the SPl refers to finish, as in which place the Greyhound finished in, in this case, 1st.
The remaining columns of the scorecard, as well as a summary on how to read it, will be discussed in the next article.
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