Racing: It's greyhound heaven as punters go to the dogs

If you love greyhound racing your dreams have come true.

Because for two days the dogs will rule racing Australasian-wide.

With the Equine Influenza scare in Australia having forced all horse racing to be banned there until at least Wednesday, dog racing will be the only outlet for racing punters today.

The TAB's television channel Trackside will broadcast seven greyhound meetings today, one from Manawatu and six from Australia.

While the Manawatu greyhounds were programmed, Australian racing coverage on a Monday usually consists of at least three thoroughbred meetings and three harness, with greyhounds taking over later at night.

"It has made for a pretty busy day for us," said TAB raceday control manager Ian Walls yesterday.

"It is rare for us to have to re-arrange our schedule anything like this but we have been working with Sky TV in Australia to make it as good as possible for punters in both countries."

That has meant the Manawatu greyhounds will start later than usual and soon after it will be back to back hounds chasing artificial bunnies.

Horse punters at least had one meeting to concentrate on yesterday, albeit a minor one in Invercargillharness.

Australian TABs bet on nine races from Invercargill as well as all races at the Auckland greyhounds as they struggled to give racing punters something to get their teeth into.

But that had little benefit for New Zealand punters because while we bet into co-mingled pools on Australian racing, Australian money on our races is not co-mingled yet, meaning Australian punters were betting into smaller, state TAB pools.

So the New Zealand TAB pools at Invercargill and Auckland yesterday were not much larger than usual.

The New Zealand codes do however still profit, with Australian TABs having to pay out 3 per cent of the turnover on yesterday's meetings to Harness Racing New Zealand and Greyhound Racing New Zealand.

While losing weekend horse racing from Australia may have cost the New Zealand TAB around $4 million in turnover, the losses today and tomorrow will be far less as they are the two weakest punting days ofthe week.

But if, as expected, Australian horse racing does not start again on Wednesday the TAB's pain will befar greater.

While having only greyhound racing on Trackside today would seem to be a boost for that code it can often have the opposite effect.

With greyhound racing clearly the third ranked of the racing codes in New Zealand, some horse punters use betting on the dogs as a way to fill in time while inside TAB agencies, taking smaller wagers and watching Trackside for an interest.

With no horse racing today some punters simply won't bother going to the TAB or turning on Trackside.