GREYHOUND USA
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Gen. George Custer with his greyhounds before the Battle of Little Bighorn. |
Greyhounds were in the United States at least as early as 1848, when a coursing contest – with antelopes as the quarry – received mention in a book about Oregon and California.
U.S. cavalry officers serving in the West often kept greyhounds because they could catch game and help scouts detect movement at a distance. Among the greyhound fanciers was Gen. George Armstrong Custer, who coursed his greyhounds the night before the fateful Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.
Major James H. "Hound Dog" Kelly learned to breed and train greyhounds while he was Custer's orderly. In 1878, Kelly's team of four greyhounds set a record by running down six out of a dozen antelopes. With that event, American coursing began.
As farms spread through the Midwest and into the West after the Civil War, many greyhounds were imported from England to help protect crops from jackrabbits. Coursing meets with two competing dogs chasing a live rabbit became popular. Along with harness racing, they also were staged at county fairs.
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Spectators watching a coursing meet at a late 19th-century county fair. |
In 1905, Owen Patrick Smith, director of the chamber of commerce in Hot Springs, S.D., organized a coursing meet to attract visitors to the town. The meet was successful, but Smith felt that the sport was cruel. He began thinking about ways to make coursing a more humane sport with broader spectator appeal. Smith didn't know about the English "coursing by proxy" experiment of 1876, but he came up with the same basic idea – greyhounds chasing an artificial hare instead of a live one. He also improved on the idea by envisioning a race on an oval track rather than a straight course.
Smith brought his idea to George Sawyer, a wealthy greyhound owner who had many interests, including a boxing arena in Oakland, Calif. At first Sawyer refused to give Smith financial help. Like many greyhound owners of the time, he insisted that a greyhound wouldn't even chase a lure that didn't have a scent. Nevertheless, Smith persevered, organizing the Intermountain Coursing Association, and he built a small circular track near Salt Lake City in 1907, where he introduced his artificial lure. It was a stuffed rabbit skin, pulled around the track behind a motorcycle.
Sawyer was impressed by the trial and became Smith's financial backer. In 1910, Smith patented an "inanimate hare conveyor" – basically an overhead arm that carried the artificial rabbit, trolley-like along the track. Unfortunately, the device failed the test when water short-circuited the system.
It wasn't until 1919 that Smith had another major opportunity for a public demonstration of his idea for greyhound racing. Sawyer and other businessmen financed construction of a track and grandstand at Emeryville, Calif., using the lumber from Sawyer's dismantled boxing arena. Smith had a new device, a motorized four-wheel cart that carried the lure on a rail around the 3/16-mile track.
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Early 20th century poster advertising a coursing race. |
Sawyer had become a believer, but he felt that greyhound racing would attract spectators only if they could place bets on the races. Smith personally was opposed to gambling, but he reluctantly agreed. They moved their operation to Tulsa, Okla., and allowed bookmakers take bets. Although the lure mechanism wasn't perfect, the meeting was a success.
The Tulsa venture also produced the first great racing greyhound, Mission Bay, who won 28 of 30 career races.
After five weeks in Tulsa, Sawyer and Smith moved on to East St. Louis, Ill. The races there were so popular that companies complained about employees missing work to go to the track, so night racing was introduced and grew in popularity.
Despite an average daily attendance of about 2,000 during the five-week meet, the track went bankrupt, and Sawyer lost interest in the venture. Smith then headed to Florida, where he got the financial backing that made greyhound racing a permanent success.
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Postcard from one of the first greyhound race tracks in Florida. |
The first Florida track was built in 1922 in an area called Humbuggus, which was later renamed Hialeah and became better known for thoroughbred racing. The key to success was night racing. After establishing that track, Smith moved around the country, helping set up tracks in Erlanger, Ky., New Orleans, Milwaukee, Butte, Mont., and East St. Louis, Ill.
The sport had its fastest growth in Florida. The Hialeah operation closed down in 1926, but other dog-racing tracks were established at St. Petersburg in 1925, Miami in 1926, and Sanford-Orlando and Miami Beach in 1927. The West Flagler Kennel Club became Miami's second track in 1930, and a track opened at Tampa in 1932.
Meanwhile, greyhound racing had also become very popular in England. Charles A. Munn, an American businessman, made a deal in 1925 with Smith and Sawyer for exclusive rights to use the artificial lure in Great Britain. Munn, with several English backers, formed the Greyhound Racing Association in 1926. Within two years, there were 68 dog tracks operating or under construction in the British Isles.
By 1930, many dog tracks, especially those in Florida, had acquired unsavory reputations because of their involvement with mobsters. A major problem was that betting was done through bookmakers, most of whom had gang links.
Pari-mutuel betting was legalized in Florida in 1932, primarily as a way to bring more revenue to the state during the Great Depression. Under government regulation, many safeguards were established to prevent the fixing of races.
Massachusetts also legalized pari-mutuel betting on greyhound races in 1934, and two major tracks opened there the following year. During the next several years, seven more states legalized betting on the sport. There are now 37 greyhound tracks in 13 states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Two tracks in Kansas closed in 2008, and a referendum passed to outlaw racing in Massachusetts beginning in 2010.
The American Greyhound Track Operators Association (AGTOA), founded by Florida track owners in 1947, became a national organization in 1960. The National Greyhound Association (NGA), established in 1906, is responsible for registering racing greyhounds in North America.
The sport reached its peak in 1992, when attendance approached 3.5 million and nearly $3.5 billion was bet on 16,827 races at more than 50 tracks. Since then, revenue has dropped precipitously, and many tracks have closed. By some accounts, greyhound racing as we know it today may be gone by 2020. Other forms of legalized gambling and pressure from animal rights groups has hurt the industry.
Idaho, Maine, North Carolina, Nevada, Vermont, Virginia and Washington all passed legislative bans on dog racing during the 1990s. Tracks in Arkansas, Iowa, Rhode Island and West Virginia now subsist primarily on revenues from slot machines. The industry has been pushing for legalized slot machines, video lottery terminals, and other types of gambling at tracks in other states, but so far without success.
Information for this page came from the American Greyhound Council. |
