By DAVID BRASCH

WHAT on earth was a German family thinking two decades ago when they decided to start a website dedicated to greyhound racing?

Holger von Boehn and his son Gunnar and Gunnar’s wife Anja were instrumental in developing greyhound-data, the website that has become a virtual bible of pedigrees for the greyhound racing industry worldwide.

A few years ago, the von Boehn family realised the greyhound-data website needed an urgent update. The server managing the site could no longer cope. It was going to be an expensive exercise.

The family approached Tony Gallagher and a partner in the UK with a proposition to buy them out.

Tony jumped at the chance.

The Germans had already been approached by the UK site Racing Post but Holger and Gunnar were happy for Tony and his partner to match the offer.

They did.

And in the few ensuing years, greyhound-data has grown to heights even those devoted to the industry could not have envisaged. In a recent podcast interview with “The Greyhound Girl” Dimity Maher, Tony related some staggering facts in regards to greyhound-data.

Greyhound-data now has:

– 245,000 members, up from 98,000 when Tony bought it

– 2.3 million dogs on its database

– 4.6 million race results

– 100,000 videos of races

– Every single day greyhound-data gets 100-150 emails and all need to be answered

Also, every day 800 testmatings are conducted

Some 62 countries are represented by members

The site gets 750 new members per month

Visits on the site daily are between 18,000 and 25,000. They stay on average seven minutes

The site sends out emails twice a week on recent topics of interest to the industry. 150,000 members receive these.

As Tony Gallagher points out: “During the attempt to ban greyhound racing in NSW in 2016, it was claimed greyhound racing was only in operation in eight countries. This is not true. We have 62 countries throughout the world represented on greyhound-data.”