To minimise safety risks to track staff, greyhounds, and participants, and to protect vital racing infrastructure, lure carriages at tracks have been standardised while clubs have been provided with identical sets of four trial lure arms, which are planned for use for all trial sessions from August 2022.
A key recommendation of the 2018 Dexis Report Improving Greyhound Racing Safety, endorsed by the GRV Board, identified that standard lure equipment at all tracks would provide a consistent racing and trialling experience, in addition to improving greyhound safety.
For the last three years, trial arms provided to Clubs by GRV have been made from non-rigid and light weight polyethylene (PE) piping without any reported failure or incident attributed to the PE material. As such, all GRV supplied metal and steel arms will be permanently removed from use from August.
The ‘new’ arms are upgraded, fully tested versions or variations of current arm designs, made from the same PE piping as used previously, and are available for trainers to view at club trial sessions from today. Trial arm options are shown below.
Trial Lure Arm Options
Trainers can continue to use their existing decoys, squeakers, lure sleeves and covers when trialling on the ‘new’ arms, which include:
- A short arm (red) where the squeaker, decoy or lure sits on top and is tied on (for bite on trials).
- A short arm (red) that a lure sleeve or cover slides on (for bite on trials).
- A new extended arm (blue) that a lure sleeve or cover can slide on (for bite on trials). The arm will sit slightly higher than shown below when the new bracket connecting the arm to the carriage is installed.
- A short arm (blue) version of the finish on lure with hooks that decoys or covers can clip or tie on to (for muzzle on trials).
Notice of upcoming changes to trialling practices
GRV and Clubs are committed to ensuring a safe workplace for all staff, participants, and greyhounds.
Consistent with this commitment, trainers should be aware that to minimise safety risks, GRV intends to phase out:
- the sharing of GRV supplied lure covers / sleeves by trainers from different kennels, and
- allowing trainers to supply their own trial arms.
The timing of the phase out is subject to availability of lure sleeves, squeakers and/or decoys that suit the updated trial arms, which is now likely to be late 2022 or early 2023 due to a supply shortage of the synthetic material used to manufacture these items.
In the interim, trainers will be able to continue to:
- use their own trial lure arms, or
- trial on GRV supplied lure sleeves / covers.
To prevent trip hazards for trialling greyhounds, trainers should ensure that the lures, decoys, or squeakers they supply do not drag on the track surface, whether used with personal or GRV lure arms.
GRV will provide an update as to the likely timing of the phase out once information regarding material supply of lure sleeves is known.
How do I provide feedback on these changes?
Trainers affected by the upcoming changes are encouraged to provide feedback in writing to enable GRV and Clubs to fully understand their impact, by emailing the Feedback Office at [email protected]