The greyhound industry is still racing to the bottom

Thursday, 29 May 2025

Greyhound Racing NZ is seeking a judicial review in an attempt to stop the sport being banned. (File photo)

Virginia Fallon is a staff writer and columnist based in Wellington.

OPINION: Carrington Magic came eighth.

She was wearing a jaunty red vest when on May 16 she burst onto Whanganui’s Hatrick Raceway; a sleek and sharp-nosed dog running like the wind.

She ran and ran, and at the first bend she fell.

You can find the footage online if you want to see it for yourself. She crashes, gets trampled by another dog in a yellow coat, and then the camera carries on along the track because punters want to see what they’re betting on.

But first, we see Carrington Magic flip a few times, apparently suffering an open fracture in her left hind leg that had her euthanised on the day.

She ran, she died, and she was the eighth dog to do so since the ban on greyhound racing was announced.

Six months after that announcement, Greyhound Racing NZ (GRNZ) is now seeking a judicial review, claiming it wasn’t adequately informed, prepared and consulted with before the ban.

Eight racing greyhounds have died since the ban was announced in December. (File photo)

It also claims a Cabinet paper produced by the Department of Internal Affairs was “selective” in what it included and left out, and that a Racing Integrity Board report published just a month before the ban said that GRNZ met welfare standards, often better than other animal sports or greyhound racing worldwide.

It’s claiming other things as well, but all of them are nonsense.

Because this is an industry that’s had warning after warning and report after report, even as its individual members have drugged, beaten, and inflicted outrageous other cruelties on dogs.

This is an industry that in a 2021 report conducted by Sir Bruce Robertson was accused of unnecessarily obfuscating information, revealing that no reason had been given for 462 of the 923 euthanasias in the past four years

This is an industry so secretive and sly, that after the ban was announced, the Government also rushed through legislation to stop the unnecessary killing of dogs.

And even now, six months after this industry was found utterly unable to bring itself up to a reasonable welfare standard - whatever that is in a bloodsport - it still won’t quit.

“We love dogs and our dogs love to race“ is its incredible catch cry, and no it will not go gentle into that good night.

While at least eight dogs have died on the racetracks since December, says animal welfare group Safe, at least another 300 have been injured, including 58 who suffered broken bones.

Others, meanwhile, are just doggone gone.

At least 300 greyhounds have been injured since December, according to Safe. (File photo)

In April, one New Zealand trainer packed up 80 greyhounds and shipped them to Australia where they can continue to run and die.

Off they went, only about three months after Racing Minister Winston Peters said New Zealand’s racing dogs would not be 're-racetracked' overseas under new legislation.

Now, with 14 months to go, the greyhound industry isn’t even on a loose leash but still running free and mad as it always has.

And as they always have, the dogs keep dying.

Big Time Hinda, collapsed on-track; Know Motor, died after surgery for a severe fracture; and Homebush Honey died after she was seen being propped up - because she couldn’t stand up - and hosed down.

Homebush Milo, meanwhile, at least won his race before he died at Addington in March.

The greyhound industry, that cannot see what’s wrong with itself, will run and run until the very end.

Which is why it should have been put out of its misery straight away, on the spot, just like its latest victim was.

Poor Carrington Magic, who belonged to those we-love-our-dogs people, but broke a leg so died.