Walthamstow closure shows greyhound racing is going to the dogs

Published on Monday 18 August 2008 00:55

TO SOME Londoners, Walthamstow Stadium is as much a part of the city's cultural tapestry as Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace. As recently as the turn of the millennium, Brad Pitt was a visitor while another Hollywood resident, one David Beckham, picked up the first few pennies of his fortune for collecting glasses there. But once Mountjoy Diamond won the 11 o'clock on Saturday night, the greyhound stadium's race was run.

What had once been a 5,000-capacity Mecca for the working class of Britain's capital has fallen by the wayside in much the same way as other greyhound tracks across the United Kingdom. The irreversible decline in attendances for races staged five times a week led to a 500,000 loss last year for the Chandler family, who have owned the track since bookmaker William Chandler established it 75 years ago. Lying just a few miles north of what will become London's Olympic Park by 2012, the stadium was sold to property developers last May for a figure believed to be around 22million.

Greyhound racing has fallen a long way from its heyday in the Forties and Fifties. There were once over 100 tracks in Britain but now only 30 remain. There used to be that many in London alone, but now only Wimbledon, Croydon and Romford will stage meetings.

The decline has been put down to a combination of factors, including the changing of betting laws and the rise of online gambling, which makes cashing what is almost always a large chip to property developers the smart option. While animal rights protesters are delighted by this, it is another blow for employment, with 400 part- and full-time jobs going just at Walthamstow.

"It's been a tough time for businesses," admits Richard Hailer of the British Greyhound Racing Board, who remains defiant. "There's no question of the sport coming under threat. It won't die out."

Yet nowhere was a place more synonymous with greyhound racing than Walthamstow. Pitt took in its unique aroma of chicken and chips while filming the Guy Ritchie film Snatch. A few years earlier, Blur paid their own tribute by using images from a meeting at Walthamstow for the artwork on their album Parklife.

And then there was the brush with a young Beckham, born in nearby Leytonstone and yet to make his mark at Manchester United so still looking to earn a couple of quid by taking the regulars' empties back to the bar. As the former England captain's star has risen to unforeseen heights, so his first place of employment has tumbled.

There will be one part of the stadium that escapes when the bulldozers move in sometime in September. The famous Walthamstow Stadium sign, a giant white wall made all the more distinctive by green and pink neon lights, has protected architectural status and will become an incongruous monument to a bygone era when the plush London apartments rise around it in the next few years.

Even so, this particular dog – dubbed "the Las Vegas at the end of the Victoria line" – has had its day.