Professional Sports in London - Horse and Greyhound Racing

Maybe the line between sports and entertainment gets a little blurred here because the excitement in horseracing and especially in greyhound racing comes from having a bet. Six dogs doing two laps are six dogs doing two laps until you put some money on one of them.

People in the UK love having a bet and racing has always been really popular. There are three horseracing courses inside the M25, the major road that circles London.

Kempton Park near Sunbury on Thames has just had a major renovation where they replaced their flat turf racing course with an all weather poly track to allow year round and night thoroughbred racing. They still have their steeplechase or national hunt course and probably their biggest event of the year is the Christmas meeting starting the 26th December, featuring one of the biggestjump races of the year the King George VI Chase.
Kempton are holding a lot of what they call twilght meetings between here and Christmas where the first race starts around 4pm, so if you feel like a little action its not that far from central London.

Sandown Park is fairly close to Kempton but on the other, south side of the Thames in Esher. It also hosts both flat and jump racing and has a reputation as one of the best viewing tracks in the country. Because all its races are on turf there is no flat racing during the winter months and its fixture schedule is not as busy as Kempton’s. Again within easy reach of the centre of town.

Epsom, on the very edge of south London, is the venue for the most famous thoroughbred race in Britain, The Derby, first run in 1779 and contested every year in early June by three year old colts. The course itself is very unconventional, with Derby horses running uphill and then having a steeps descent followed by a swinging turn, it’s a unique track for a special race. Epsom is a fairly lightly used course with no winter meetings taking place.

Royal Windsor is outside of London but close enough to make its summer Monday evening meetings something not to miss. You can catch a train from Waterloo to Windsor station and take a short boat ride straight to the racecourse, the place to be on a sunny summer evening.

Greyhound racing is not for everyone but can be a fun night out if you go with a group of friends and a little money you’re prepared to lose. There are four main greyhound tracks left in London, there used to be more, Walthamstow, Wimbledon, Romford and Crayford.

Walthamstow in the east of London is the one I’m familar with. Its usually very busy on its weekend evening meetings especially in summer. Each meet consists of between 12-14 races so there’s never too much waiting around if you’ve lost and hope to get some money back. Normally races are run between around 240-650 metres and there are six dogs in each race.

Unless you really study greyhound form the name will mean nothing to you, lots of people just go for a night out and will have a small bet on each race just hoping but not expecting to win. Anyone betting a lot of money on a greyhound race must have plenty or be on personal terms with the dogs running.

Puttting a bet on a horse or a dog is really the reason both sports exist and at both horse and greyhound tracks there are two was to do this in the UK. You can either go to the Tote or the ‘Rails or Boards’ bookmakers in the Betting Ring.

The Tote are the guys behind the glass windows were you go up and tell them what kind of bet you want, singles, each-way, forecasts, trifectas etc depending on how well you know your betting and animals running.
The bookies in the Ring are the guys down by the side of the track who used to stand on orange boxes with an open satchel and a chalkboard with the odds they were offering on. At big race meetings there are dozens of these independent bookies in the ring, although these days they’ve had to get rid of the chalkboard and use a computerized screen that shows you the odds and gives you a printed ticket.

The difference between the two is the Tote takes all the money on a single bet and puts it into a pool, then they take a cut for themselves and divide up what’s left between all the winning tickets. The Ring bookies give you a price/odds on your horse or dog and if it wins they’ll pay you out on those odds. You may have fifty bookies in the Ring and they’re all trying to attract business so some will be offering slightly better odds than others. The trick is to watch which way the market on a race is going and jump in with your bet when you think the odds have gone out as far as they’ll go.

If you’re not at or can’t go to a race meeting its still easy to have a bet in the UK, on practically every shopping street you’ll find a bookmakers. They’re big business and run by large companies that have chains of shops the length of the country. The ones you can’t fail to miss walking on any high street in Britain are William Hill, Ladbrokes, Coral, Paddy Power, with smaller operations like Stan James and small one-off independent shops.

Bookmakers used to be smoky places for middle aged men but they’ve had a makeover following the explosion in betting on things like football and are now clean and light shops where you can sit and watch 20 screens.

If you’re looking for a bookmakers, find the nearset pub because they’re generally close together. Betting is completely legal in the UK and there’s no tax on winnings, just be careful not to get carried away and spoil your day by betting more than you are prepared to lose, because the odds are always against you.