|
 Although the interest towards greyhound racing has slowly declined in the past years, this sport still attracts many bettors especially in United Kingdom, Ireland and United States of America. The greyhounds are a breed of dogs with special features like long, powerful legs and flexible spine, which enable them to reach during races speeds of over 60 km per hour. The race actually consists in chasing a fake rabbit on the track. The first dog that crosses the finish line is considered the winner.
The history of greyhound racing is not long, the first experimental greyhound race taking place in 1876 in United States. The experiment failed and only 40 years later after the mechanical rabbit decoy was invented the sport was developed. The “father” of greyhound racing is Owen Patrick Smith who invented the artificial rabbit pulling mechanism. Few years later the new sport is introduced in United Kingdom and has a huge success. In just one year over 40 greyhound racing tracks are opened throughout the country. The sport was loved especially by the working class men that used to meet in the evenings at the racing tracks. The new racing sport also started to attract wealthy individual that invest small fortunes in this sport becoming greyhound owners. The most famous greyhound owners include Al Capone, Frank Sinatra and Vinnie Jones. The best times for greyhound races, with the greatest popularity in its entire history was right after the World War II. It is estimated that during its best times, more than 30 million people worldwide paid each year to enter the greyhound races. After 1960s the greyhound racing started to decline, but these days the races still continue on large scale in United Kingdom, Ireland, United States, Australia and New Zealand. In the recent years several adoption groups were created in UK and US with the main objective to place retired greyhounds as family pets and to pressure the owners to increase the life quality of the racing greyhounds. |
