Reading Your Greyhound's Racing Charts

A racing chart is a listing of all dogs who competed in a single race. Since there are usually 8 dogs in a race, each race chart will typically have eight lines. Tracks will keep both race charts and performance lines. Different tracks and online sources like Greyhound Data may have their own preferences for the order and format in which their information is listed, but the same information tends to be presented. See below for an explanation of each detail in this chart, produced by a company called Rosnet, which provides data collection services to a number of greyhound tracks. If you don't see an explanation for an abbreviation on your dog's lines or charts here, feel free to email me and I'll look it up.

The First Line - When you call up the race charts of a particular dog, the first line at the top lists, in order: Dog's Name; color; sex; date of birth; sire and dam's names; name of the racing owner.

A - The first thing in this line is the abbreviation of the name of the track. This graphic shows DB, which stands for Daytona Beach. You can see a full listing of US track abbreviations by going to the Greyhound Racing Racing Basics - Track Abbreviations page. After the track abbreviation, the date and time of the race is listed (A=afternoon; E=evening, M=matinee), then the number of the race, grade of the race (in this case E), the length of the race (5-16ths of a mile in this example) and the condition of the track. In this example the 'going' is Fast.

B - Names of the dogs in the race.

C - Weight of the dog.

D - The box number the dog was assigned to.

E - The first number here lists position at the break, the position of the dog as it came out of the starting box. The second number lists the dog's position at the first turn, and the third number is the dog's position at the top of the home stretch (exiting the last turn).

F - This lists the dog's position at the finish line and how many lengths behind the winner he or she was. If the dog was first, the lengths indicator is how far ahead he or she was of the 2nd place dog. An NS abbreviation = nose. HD = head.

G - Time, in seconds, of the winner of the race.

H - Betting odds on the dog.

I - This lists track comments on the dog's race - often it will be noted here if the dog was crowded or bumped, or how much in contention he or she was for a winning position. For a list of basic chartwriter's terms, see this listing at Greyhound Racing.com.

J - This arrow and the line just under it indicates the dog whose racing charts you have called up.