A freak result at Watford’s Vicarage Road dog track on Friday has cost bookmakers around £500,000.

Two rank outsiders – Bethphage, which started at 25-1 and Coronach, a 20-1 shot, filled the first two places in the seventh race at Friday’s meeting, after the four more fancied runners were involved in first bend bunching.

And it brought joy to hundreds of off-track punters. They had coupled the dogs in forecast bets – naming the first two in the correct order – and received a dividend of £41.81 for a 10p stake – odds of over 400 to 1.

A Ladbrokes spokesman said: “It was a fluke, and costly, result.”

[From the Watford Observer of December 20, 1974]