tracks elsewhere undoubtedly would follow. “In
20 years, will anyone even remember what grey-
hound racing was?”
This is the one thing on which he agrees with
Carey Theil, whose Massachusetts-based advo-
cacy group Grey2K USA spearheaded the drive
for Amendment 13: Shut down Florida’s tracks,
and there goes the industry.
“Florida really was the industry,” Theil says.T
HE GRAY-BEARDED WINNING is a born
storyteller. He started at the track
45 years ago, collecting half-dollars
from the turnstiles. He remembers
when the regulars included rakish
gamblers named “the Flicker” and
“Champagne Tony,” the track restau-
rant served a 37-ounce prime rib, and a live band
played between races.
Winning says greyhounds are the only dog
breed in the Bible. That’s sort of true. The King
James Version of Proverbs 30:29-31 cites them
as “comely in going.” (Scholars say the original
Hebrew refers to Afghan hounds or salukis.)
The king’s translators knew about greyhounds
because of a then popular sport called coursing,
in which two greyhounds race to catch a rabbit.
Queen Elizabeth I loved it—hence greyhound
racing’s nickname, the “sport of queens.”
Dog racing as we know it today originated with
an American inventor named Owen P. Smith,
who was moved by the grim deaths of the rabbits
to come up with an alternative. Smith’s idea was
to replace the live rabbit with a mechanical one.
In 1910 he secured a patent for what he called the
Inanimate Hare Conveyor.
“Nobody in the history of any sport brought
about a change comparable to that worked by
the inventor of the device, and yet no inventor
in sports history is so little known,” Sports Illus-
trated commented in 1973.
Smith and two partners also designed the first
modern greyhound track, the Blue Star Amuse-
ment Company, which opened in 1919 outside
Oakland, California. It failed, as did several oth-
ers, because it didn’t allow betting. Gambling,
while popular, was illegal.
The first successful track, the Miami Kennel
Club, was one Smith and his partners opened
in 1922 in a swampy Florida locale known as
Humbuggus. It was so close to the Everglades
that the owners employed a snake catcher to
snag stray reptiles. The key to its success wasthe use of electric lights, according to Gwyneth
Anne Thayer, author of Going to the Dogs, a book
on greyhound racing and its place in popular
culture. Lights meant that races could be run
at night, when working people could attend.
Amid Florida’s 1920s land boom, thousands of
new residents sought evening entertainment.
(The track later was converted to horse racing
and renamed Hialeah Park.)
In 1925, on the other side of the state, Derby
Lane opened under a cloud. The partners who
built it ran out of money, so lumber magnate
T.L. Weaver, Winning’s great-grandfather, took
possession. He grew beans in the infield, track
historian Louise Weaver says. Between races,
he once had monkeys ride the dogs, their uni-
forms sewn to the greyhounds’ blankets so they
couldn’t escape and the dogs couldn’t buck
them off.
Although betting was illegal, the tracks “did
something sneaky,” Winning said. “They sold
shares in the dogs.” Winners would get a “div-
idend.” Losers would not. Other tracks ran “on
the fix”—meaning they’d keep operating until
raided and open again once the coast was clear.
In 1931, with the Great Depression bank-
rupting local governments, Florida legislators
passed a bill to legalize and tax betting on the
races. Governor Doyle Carlton, a devout Bap-
tist, opposed it. Years later, he said gamblers
offered him $100,000 to sign the bill. Instead,
he vetoed it. State senators overrode his veto,
making Florida the first state to legalize betting
on dog races. Dog tracks then popped up in
Tampa (1932), Orlando and Jacksonville (1935),
Pensacola (1946), and Key West (1953).
Greyhound racing became part of Florida’s
sun-and-fun image. Mickey Mantle filmed a
cigarette commercial at Derby Lane. Boxing
champs and movie stars hung out at the tracks.
The 1959 movie A Hole in the Head shows Frank
Sinatra betting on Miami dog races.F
LORIDA CAN BE a sunny place full of
shady people. The money involved in
dog racing attracted plenty of them.
Winning recalls Tampa mobster Santo
Trafficante, Jr.’s minions placing bets
at Derby Lane. Some mafiosi were
more than customers. Charles “Lucky”
Luciano and Meyer Lansky held an interest in
South Florida dog tracks, says Scott Deitche,
author of seven books on the Mafia.126 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC