Greyhound racing
canine racing sport involving the Greyhound dog breed
Greyhound racing is an organised, competitive sport in which greyhounds race on dedicated tracks. The modern track form of the sport developed from hare coursing and uses a mechanically operated artificial lure (usually a form of windsock) that travels along a rail ahead of the dogs. As with horse racing, greyhound races frequently involve parimutuel or bookmaker betting.
In some countries, particularly Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States, it forms part of the commercial gambling industry.
In recent years, greyhound racing has declined in several jurisdictions, with a number of countries and regions introducing bans or phase-outs, often citing animal welfare concerns.
History
Modern greyhound racing has its origins in coursing. The first recorded attempt at racing greyhounds on a straight track was made beside the Welsh Harp reservoir, Hendon, England, in 1876, but this experiment did not develop. The industry emerged in its recognisable modern form, featuring circular or oval tracks, with the invention of the mechanical, or artificial, hare in 1912 by an American, Owen Patrick Smith. Smith had altruistic aims for the industry to stop the killing of the jack rabbits and see "greyhound racing as we see horse racing". In 1919, Smith opened the first professional dog-racing track with stands in Emeryville, California.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1345388. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1876, 1912 and 1919.
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This entry incorporates text from “Greyhound racing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.