The Wimbledon Stadium is not really in Wimbledon. With an SW17 postcode, the last dog track in London is technically in Tooting and, to confuse matters further, sits next door to Streatham cemetery. The arena itself is low and aluminium-clad but while it pushes right out on to Plough Lane, the entrance is at the back, through a series of vacant lots, past an American diner and behind a mock Tudor building that must at some point have been a pub but is now a wood-flooring warehouse painted rust orange.
Something about Wimbledon Stadium feels out of place and soon it will be out of time. The venue closes its doors forever on Saturday night after 89 years of greyhound, speedway and, latterly, banger racing. It is to be demolished and replaced with housing, a retail centre and a new home for AFC Wimbledon. Perhaps as many as 2,000 people will watch the final night’s entertainment. There will be three-course meals served in the restaurant, pints pulled beneath the terraces and three quarters of the stadium will remain shuttered in darkness.
To say that greyhound racing is not what it was might be stating the obvious. Crowds have fallen to around two million a year (an all-time low) and, when Wimbledon closes, there will be only 24 tracks remaining in the country. But it is also the case that the sport has long meant different things to different people. There are the gamblers, there are the day trippers and there are those for whom the dogs are a way of life.
For Geraldine Day, the first person in the small queue awaiting entry to the penultimate meeting, it has been a lifetime’s hobby. Alongside her husband, Raymond, she has been coming to Wimbledon dogs for 18 years (to Wembley for 10 years before that and before that meetings at Windsor). She has two bronze greyhound pins on her fleece jacket and one emblazoned on her jumper underneath.
“We know all the people here, all the staff are our friends,” she says. Each Saturday she gets Ray a copy of the Racing Post and he studies the form. She selects dogs according to her favourite numbers. “That’s 3, 4, 5 and 6,” Ray chuckles, listing two thirds of the possibilities. The couple seem neither sad nor resentful about the passing of the stadium. “It’s inevitable that it would happen,” Geraldine says. “We thought it was going to close six months ago.”
The gates open at 6.30pm, an hour before the first race. Derek Green is among the early arrivals, drinking in the concourse of the stadium, making notes in the margins of the racing guide. He is 82 and has been a regular at the Wimbledon stadium since he was 19, the dogs always at the centre of his social life. “As kids we used to come here on a Wednesday, then go dancing at the Hammersmith Palais,” he says. “Of course you could drink and drive back then.”
When Derek’s family lived at home he brought his kids and now they bring his grandchildren, though there is no sign of them this night. “It used to be filled with older gentlemen here,” he says. “There weren’t so many young people. Now the youngsters have taken over and all they do is stand there and drink. Sometimes they come over and ask about the races, ‘What’s this? What’s that?’ Anyway, it doesn’t matter, it’s getting shut down now.”
It is getting shut down in part because the sport is declining but just as importantly, because London land values are continuing to rise. Wimbledon stadium was built in 1928 by “the Cockney millionaire” William Cearns. It is now owned by Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm run by the former Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson. Risk Capital bought the then Greyhound Racing Association and its six dog tracks 12 years ago. Two of the six are now closed, with Wimbledon the third. The twist on this particular redevelopment is that it was the pledge to build a 10,000-capacity football ground that helped persuade Merton council to push through a deal. Wimbledon are the team who, in an earlier incarnation, left Plough Lane for first Selhurst Park then Milton Keynes after a protracted saga of redevelopment.
As the races begin the young people start to arrive. And Derek is right, they soon swamp the veterans. There are a lot of lads, highly groomed, in sports jackets and tight jeans. There are fewer girls and they are less dressed up, wrapped in thick coats to protect against the cold evening. There is a group of six young men on a stag do, brought forward so they could make it to the dogs before it closes. “I wanted to tell the old man I’d been,” says one. “I’ve been coming for years,” says another, “and a lot since I heard.” A third chimes in with “and we all love to gamble”.
There are 12 races over the course of the evening; eight of them ‘open’, the highest grade of race as it admits dogs of any category and from any breeder. For each race the rhythm is the same. The dogs emerge from their pits, trotting briskly on their paws like dressage horses or en pointe ballet dancers. They are led to the track by their handlers, all of whom wear long white coats, like lab technicians or butchers, and are escorted to their traps. The dogs mewl and bark and scrape at the grilles that contain them then, at the yank of a lever, they burst forth, chasing an electrified lure around the sandy track. The dogs are graceful, expressionless missiles. As they race their handlers perform their own less-elegant dash; a herd of white coats heading to the finish line where they will beckon their animal to a halt.
At trackside a bookmaker is at work. The three people manning the rail are as old as their regular punters. Ron Reed, 79, has been on the same site for 47 years, since Armistice Day 1970. He takes the money from punters and drops it into a satchel brimming with cash and with his name on the side. He relays each transaction to a colleague who enters the information by hand in a meticulous ledger. A third man constantly adjusts the odds on a whiteboard. They all work within three feet of each other. Young punters come up inquiring as to who won a race or where their dogs finished, others wonder what the card they were given by way of receipt actually does. What will Ron do when all this comes to an end? He gives me a broad smile. “Pack up,” he says.
Halfway through the programme the concourse is crowded. Above it, on the upper level of the stadium, there is a restaurant called the Grandstand. It serves smart food and is fully booked. There are more lads and lasses but also lots of young families, with babies and toddlers in tow. Older regulars suggest the diners do not even look up from their sea bass fillets when the dogs are running but tonight they are avidly watching each race; standing around their tables, arms half in the air in that way people do when there is the prospect of having something to celebrate.
Step outside the restaurant on to the upper terraces and it is quieter. A couple of staff members are having a cheeky cigarette, parents are dragging their toddlers up the steps to give somebody a breather (ostensibly the kids). It is from here that Ray Butler and Terry Dodd have chosen to watch the proceedings. Middle-aged men in matching burgundy fleeces, they are, respectively, a trainer and owner of racing greyhounds.
“There’s very few dogs left now, to be fair,” says Ray who breeds dogs at his Ireland-based stud, Hollyoak. Ray bemoans the loss of prize money, claiming that many races no longer make financial sense for trainers. “Some of the prizes on a grade race [normally denoting a lower calibre of dog] are just not there. You might get £30 to enter and it will cost you £10 a day to train a dog. That dog can race only once a week. It doesn’t add up. You used to get a lot of trainers coming over from Ireland but not any more. It’s a lot harder than it was. A lot of trainers have come out of the game and there aren’t many young ones coming through.”
They are joined by a man called Bob Orgles, who is essentially a greyhound masseur, charged with ironing out knots in the muscles of aching dogs before they compete. Bob says he can travel up to 100 miles a day to do his work, which he does unpaid. As he talks about the routine he goes through with each animal, the care and concern he has for them is evident. His eyes widen when he talks about the way a dog “will let you know” when you are applying too much pressure to a delicate area.
I’m a bit discombobulated by Bob. The worry is what he will do once this has all gone. All the older devotees seem reconciled to Wimbledon’s passing, either ready to watch it on TV or accept unsatisfactory change as inevitable. The younger visitors are more sentimental and the sense of affection for an authentic working-class culture is palpable. But that nostalgia has not been enough to get those people turning up regularly before now. It is the trainers, the white-coated handlers, the dogs themselves one feels sorry for.
Greyhound racing is not about to die. It is still the sixth most watched sport in Britain and those remaining stadiums are in some ways stable, increasingly owned by bookmakers who up the prize money and stream the action live into their shops (where the real money is).
Before the last race of the night Geraldine Day has already left. Outside the stadium a fleet of transit vans is waiting for the dogs to emerge. Their doors are open, there are bowls of water, blankets laid on seating. And the night air is filled with that mewling and barking and then the pitter patter of those dainty little feet.
• Photography by Antonio Olmos for the Guardian
