"Dog Fight", from Time Magazine, Monday, Aug 05, 1946

Two sleek greyhounds, Ballymack Border and Rossbane Dasher, were running neck & neck down the stretch. Suddenly Ballymack Border did what tiring dogs often do: he turned on his challenger, knocked him out of the race. The favorite, Rossmir Biddy, breezed past them both.

The red-light signal for a foul flashed on the tote board. By all the rules involving dogfights, it should have been declared no race and rerun later. The crowd of 26,000 expected just that. Instead the judges announced Rossmir Biddy as the winner.

That was too much for the crowd at North London's ugly, red brick Harringay Stadium. Someone in the two-shilling enclosure vaulted the barrier onto the track, shouted: "Come on!" Three or four hundred others joined him. The mob started five bonfires of broken hurdles and fencing, dumped the photo-finish camera into one of them, heaved bookies' stools through the windows of the track restaurant.

For some time trouble had been bubbling up around Britain's most popular sport, dog racing, which gained adherents in wartime when horse racing was virtually suspended, drew 30,000,000 fans to Harringay, White City and the 102 other British tracks last year. During the war, when there was not much else to gamble on, the customers thought there was dirty work but nobody did anything about it. (One suspected tactic: giving the favorite a bucket of water to drink just before post time, so that he bogged down.)

Several weeks ago there were rumors of a dog-doping wave, and Scotland Yard's operatives went on the job, with unannounced results. A deputation of Harringay "punters" (heavy bettors) told track officials that if they saw any more funny business, they would wreck the place.

With or without funny business, dog racing is a major industry in Britain. The Churches' Committee on Gambling, recognized authority on betting figures, last week estimated that 1946 betting on the dogs will add up to an all time high: £170 million through the totes, another £120 million through bookies.