The Dogs Take Over

Great Britain has a new No. 1 wartime sport: dog racing. This was attested last week by no less an authority than the Churches' Committee on Gambling. With a grave face, the Committee reported that Britons had bet $188 million at totalizators (pari-mutuels) at greyhound tracks in 1942.

The figures were conservative. Including bookmakers' turnovers, the total ran well above $200 million. Dog racing now outdraws even soccer, has nosed out horse racing as Britain's most popular sport. Like tea-drinking, bitter beer and understatement, it has become a national habit.

Every Saturday half a million Britons go to the dogs. Even in winter, 200,000 Londoners throng 19 nearby tracks. Tubes and trolley busses to Wembley, Wimbledon and White City are packed with clerks, Indian students, Irish laborers, barristers and housewives, all conning racing reports in early editions of the Star and fresh tips in the daily Greyhound Express.

Never Mind the Weather. Neither snow nor mud stop the dogs or their admirers. On sticky Saturdays tracks are coated with tar. Crowds of 15,000--all that wartime laws allow--relax in covered stands. Races take only half a minute over the 525-yd. track, with all six dogs sometimes finishing within i/io of a second.

Dog-fancying fans scream their favorites' numbers and colors. Changing odds are flashed instantly. Racing cards are free, food and drink is reasonable and good, as food now goes in Britain. The fancier tracks have clubs where a $10 membership buys such amenities as table service, private totalizator windows, attendants to place bets and pick up winnings.

A Bob, a Thousand Quid. Few fans bother with such details as the greyhounds' fancy names. An exception is the current idol, Blackwater Cutlet, a small, black 61-pounder from Wimbledon, who gets fan mail. Before races the Cutlet parades with haughty superiority in front of cheering stands who class him with famed Mick the Miller, now immortal and stuffed at Government expense, and Ballynennan Moon, now standing at stud at the record fee of -L-105.

No less essential than the dogs, but far better known, are the bookmakers. Big tracks license 150 or more for each meeting. Two shillings (40-c-) is the totalizator minimum bet. But greyhound bookies. who wear bowlers and an air of everlasting love for bettors, jump to take a one bob wager. They pride themselves on paying off faster than the tote, take -L-1,000 bets as well as one bob wagers in stride. Around their stalls at White City and Wembley, crisp -L-5 notes (the largest now printed) crackle like pine kindling.

War Baby. War cut racing to one day a week and ended the crowds of 90,000 that White City once knew. But it completely ruined horse racing, mainly by shortages of feed and transportation, and the dogs had it all to themselves. Backed by tradition and country-wide appeal, horse racing may some day become the national sport again. But dog-race promoters think the dogs will give the horses a close race.

One reason for promoters' postwar optimism is the enterprise of the friendly bookies. Even during the worst days of the blitz, they kept the sport thriving. Between races at Romford and Wimbledon in 1941, they quoted odds on dogfights going on four miles overhead between the Luftwaffe and the R.A.F.

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