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Heeeeeeere Comes The Colonel! |
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Ever wondered what the story is behind the mechanical rabbit that circles the track for each and every HGP race? The history of “The Colonel” is more than three decades old, but the real story goes back further than that, to the late 19th Century in the British countryside. Greyhound racing with an artificial lure was introduced at Hendon, England, on Sept. 11, 1876. Six dogs raced over a 400-yard straight course, chasing an artificial hare riding on "an apparatus like a skate on wheels" along a single track, according to one ancient newspaper account. In 1905, Owen Patrick Smith was director of the chamber of commerce in Hot Springs, South Dakota. According to the Greyhound Racing Association of America, he was delegated to organize a coursing meet to attract visitors to the town. Smith probably 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 other interests, including a boxing arena in Oakland, California. Sawyer at first refused to give Smith any financial help. Like many at the time, he insisted that a dog wouldn't chase a lure that didn't have a scent. That assumption proved to be wrong—greyhounds DO key visually on the flash of movement. Smith persevered, and built a small circular track near Salt Lake City in 1907, where his artificial lure was introduced. It was a stuffed rabbit skin,pulled around the track behind a motorcycle. It worked, but Smith wasn't entirely happy with it. Sawyer was impressed by the trial, though, 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 in its first 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. In 1919, Sawyer and other businessmen financed construction of a track and grandstand at Emeryville, California, 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. In 1933 pari-mutuel wagering became legal in many U.S. states, and greyhound racing took off as a popular pastime with mechanical lures as the industry standard. Although specifics of the mechanical lure are constantly being perfected, its basic design remains the same: A device runs along electronic rails (much like a subway car) controlled by an operator with a throttle in the judges’ stand. When the lure circles in front of the starting box, the doors open and the dogs chase it on sight. The lure stays ahead of the dogs (approx. 40-45 MPH) until the race is over, at which point it “hides” in a covered housing on the far turn while handlers regroup the racers, who hover nearby. Although some racetracks use a cloth-covered “bone” for a lure, the padded sheepskin “rabbit” design remains most popular at U.S. tracks. Each track has a nickname for its lure, and at HGP the rabbit is named “The Colonel.” When HGP switched from harness horse racing to greyhound racing in 1973, the track held a naming contest for its lure, and fans named the HGP rabbit after one of the town’s founding fathers, Colonel Ebenezer Hinsdale. In any given year, The Colonel circles the HGP track up to 6,000 times per season (including morning schooling races). HGP actually has several “Colonels” to use as stand-ins or spares in case of malfunction.
Sources: Greyhound Racing Association of America, Hinsdale Greyhound Park & OTB Publicity Department
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