Oxford are waiting on the results of a post-mortem examination following Premarketmaldini’s death at Sunday’s BAGS meeting.

Paul Clarke’s October 2008 dog had been due to run in an A6 race, but was found to be distressed on being taken out of his racing kennel and died soon afterwards.

The post-mortem examination is being carried out at the Royal Veterinary College under the auspices of the Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB), who will decide how to proceed on receiving the results.

Oxford racing manager Gary Baiden said: “We are waiting for the post-mortem results and that hopefully will determine the cause of death.

“If we had to guess, which we are not in the habit of doing, we would say it was something to do with the heart.

“In normal circumstances when a dog has died unexpectedly it is a heart issue, but we can’t be certain of that until we get the results back.”

He added: “The dog was taken out of the kennel ready to race in ten or 15 minutes’ time.

“It was very distressed and the kennelhand whipped it away to the vets straightaway and gave it a bowl of water, but before the vet could administer any treatment it had passed away.

“It was not an overly hot day or anything like that, so it couldn’t have been distressed with heat.”