Life as an elite athlete

by

by Warren Young, Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds

 

As the Paris Olympic Games draw closer, sports fans hear more about sports like athletics.

Let’s imagine the build-up to the Olympics has inspired you to consider dedicating yourself to become an elite sprinter. We will give you an insight into life as an elite athlete, but will present this narrative through the lens of a greyhound’s reality. At the end, you can decide if this is a life you want to pursue.

The narrative begins ...

We have high hopes for you

You have been bred from parents who were successful racers, so we have high hopes for you. Your genetics allow you to run with speed and power, but the trade-off is you lack the endurance to make you resistant to injury.

You will live in a training facility around other athletes so you can concentrate on your sport. This means you won’t be able to interact with others outside your racing activities. That means you will only see other athletes and your trainer.

We will let you out to train and to run freely from time to time, but you must go back to your little room for most of the day.

Your trainer only has your welfare in mind

You can trust a trainer that is allocated to you, even though they don’t have any formal qualifications in coaching.

If you are feeling too sore and tired to race, don’t worry because your trainer only has your welfare in mind.

We will give you a catchy name for the punters to learn. But if you are not good enough to race, you won’t have a name.

Enhancing your performance

If you don’t feel motivated to race, we have a way to enhance your drive to run faster. Sometimes we get small live animals which you can chase at training.

Before you race, we might give you a substance to try to improve your performance. It might be against the rules and have some nasty side effects, but luckily, you won’t know anything about it.

Don’t worry about us getting caught because there isn’t much of a penalty.

Doing what you love

On race day, we will take you to the track to compete. If it’s really hot or cold and wet, it might be a little dangerous. Hopefully there won’t be too many really hot days that could cause heart failure from racing.

During a race you will reach very high speeds and when you run around the bend, it will become very congested. If you collide with another competitor, you are likely to fall and could possibly break a leg or your spine.

I’m sure this won’t worry you too much because we know how much your kind just love to race.

Your sacrifice won't be in vain

If you break a leg, we might be able to rehabilitate you, but this will depend on whether we want to spend our money because it is very expensive.

If you are badly injured in a race, a medical professional might have to kill you to end your pain. I’m sure you understand that this is a humane way to deal with a serious injury.

At least your sacrifice will not be in vain because you will be entertaining families with young children.

We might even be able to sell you to a university so they can do research with your body.

You can help your owners and trainers get rich!

If you survive your races and have a successful career, we will make lots of money and will feed you really good food that successful athletes deserve.

But, if you don’t win enough races, you will be forced to retire. We aren’t really sure what we’ll do with you then.

We can’t afford to feed you expensive food or spend a lot on medical care, so we’ll see if a home for ex-racers will take you. If one of our homes can’t take you, we’ll hope that a community group will take you, or we might send you overseas to the USA to find a new home. If none of that works out, we might have to sell you on Gumtree.

Although the general public don’t approve of gambling on races, think of the prize money. Your trainers and owners might get rich!

So, now that you’ve heard about the life of an elite athlete, are you excited to participate?

... the narrative ends

I understand dogs can’t be treated exactly like humans. But the treatment of racing greyhounds is absolutely nothing like how we would deal with human athletes. A prize-winning greyhound might be pampered while they are generating income, but once that money dries up, they are worthless.

The greyhound racing industry needs to stop pretending that they treat their dogs like athletes. The greyhounds are nothing more than disposable commodities that exist to make money for trainers, owners, punters, and gambling companies.