Presented to
Racing Queensland – Gary Heath, Lachlan Murray
Racing Minister – Alex Nolan Racing Policy Advisor
MacSporran Recommendation 12, 66
66. The Commission recommends that a further, lower class of racing be made available for greyhounds which for a variety of reasons may not be competitive and thus forced into retirement from the industry. Such a proposal would require a set of grading rules to ensure the fairness of such a class of racing. This initiative, if successful would extend the racing career of many greyhounds and ease the burden of numbers that need rehoming.
The QGBOTA acknowledges that grading and draws for pathways racing can be challenging under the current changes to the grading policy.
In an effort to embrace the intention and spirit of the MacSporran recommendation, we wish to highlight that pathways is an opportunity for dogs to return to form and future draws into 5th grades. We made the following suggestion to benefit the owner and trainers to delay forced retirement.
Recommended change to the prizemoney policy.
Prizemoney to be redistributed with fairness and acknowledgement for returns to owner/trainers encouraging the race career continuation for lower class racing.
Prize pool to be divided by 8 for even distribution, regardless of actual number of starters.
EG Straight 300 maiden/graded Prize pool of $2150 is paid $270 (for ease of rounding) to each starter plus starters fee.
This will compensate a lower class and discourage higher earning dogs to be nominated for easy wins.