from a dead stop, a field of grade-J racers makes a perfect break from the 5/16th-mile starting box on their way to over 40 miles per hour. The Greyhounds wear muzzles not only to protect each other from inadvertently nipping and biting while racing but also to make clearer the winner in a photo finish.
CHAPTER 1
From the short-lived Atlantic City Kennel Club of the Roaring Twenties to Massachusetts’s iconic racetracks to the former Thoroughbred racetrack in Rhode Island reborn as the Lincoln Greyhound Park, Greyhound racing in the Northeast is a study in diversity. During the early 1930s, dozens of racetracks opened and then closed after a single seasonal meet of perhaps only a few months, never to open again, while Massachusetts’s Wonderland and Raynham Parks, which opened in 1935 and 1940, respectively, flourished. In the 1970s, Rhode Island and Connecticut opened their own Greyhound racetracks. During the 1990s, video lottery machines were installed at some of the racetracks, turning them into racetrack/casino hybrids known as racinos. At the same time, adoption efforts for retired Greyhound racers became a priority for everyone involved with the sport.
With a rich history of Thoroughbred and Greyhound racing, Lincoln Park was a Rhode Island icon for more than half a century.
On July 7, 1923, Greyhound racing was thrust into mainstream politics when the Atlantic City Kennel Club opened its racetrack for its second annual meet. Unfortunately for the kennel club, New Jersey lawmakers at the time viewed gambling as a sign of human weakness and even a threat to social morality. Less than three weeks after the opening, on July 26, Atlantic City detectives raided the racetrack on the order of New Jersey Prosecutor Louis Repetto, who arrested the racetrack operators and closed down the premises. With the exception of limited racing during 1926, the Atlantic City Kennel Club would not see Greyhound racing again until 1933. A year later, racing ended for good at this location.
To the north in Massachusetts, Greyhound racing was faring much better during this time. In 1934, the same year in which racing was shut down in New Jersey, the Massachusetts Legislature legalized pari-mutuel wagering, thus paving the way for three state-sanctioned racetracks to open in 1935—Wonderland Park in Revere, the Crescent Kennel Club in Springfield, and the Bristol County Kennel Club (later renamed the Taunton Kennel Club) in Taunton. By 1940, the Crescent Kennel Club was out of business, replaced by Raynham Park in the city of Raynham.
It was at the Taunton Kennel Club in 1949 that the American Greyhound Derby was established. It was the first championship stake race open to any dog in the world; the winner, therefore, was titled World Champion. On September 10, 1950, the stake race was aired nationally on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC)—a first for the sport of Greyhound racing. (The Taunton Kennel Club hosted the American Greyhound Derby until 1985; thereafter, the stake was hosted by Rhode Island’s Lincoln Greyhound Park.)
Massachusetts’s Raynham Park, Wonderland Park, and the Taunton Kennel Club would remain the only Greyhound racetracks in the New England region until the early 1970s, when New Hampshire legalized Greyhound racing, allowing the Hinsdale and Seabrook Greyhound Parks to open. The Hinsdale Greyhound Park, originally built in 1958 as a seasonal harness racetrack, opened to Greyhound racing in 1972, making it a dual facility. (Harness racing at Hinsdale continued until the 1985 season, when local economics forced its discontinuance.) The Seabrook Greyhound Park opened the following year on July 2—amazingly, just three months after construction had begun at the racetrack facility. Unfortunately, Massachusetts voters took away the legalization of Greyhound racing in the state, forcing an end to the sport as of January 1, 2010.
The Plainfield Greyhound Park opened in 1976 in neighboring Connecticut; it would be another two decades before the state’s second Greyhound racetrack, the Shoreline Star Greyhound Park, would open on November 1, 1995. Both racetracks in Connecticut would eventually suffer from dwindling attendance that would ultimately lead to their demise. The Plainfield Greyhound Park closed its doors on May 14, 2005; the Shoreline Star Greyhound Park closed on May 29, 2006.
In Rhode Island, the Lincoln Greyhound Park (later renamed Lincoln Park, and then Twin River), located in the city of Lincoln, ran its inaugural Greyhound race on June 23, 1977. The first seasonal meet barely topped one hundred days, a far cry from its schedule of three hundred days per year seen in later years. The addition of broadcast video simulcast signals in 1991 allowed patrons to wager on races from different racetracks, thus broadening the patron base.
By the end of 1992, Greyhound and Thoroughbred racetracks in Rhode Island had been allowed to install video lottery machines, converting their respective facilities into racinos. On September 15, 1999, Lincoln Park was granted permission to add five hundred new video lottery machines—bringing its total to twelve hundred—despite Governor Lincoln Almond’s request for an emergency injunction against the Rhode Island State Lottery Commission. By 2002, Lincoln Park boasted some seventeen hundred machines.
Tucked into roadside foliage, a solitary billboard offers a hint about some of the changes that have taken place there over the decades. Originally built in 1947 as a Thoroughbred racetrack known as Lincoln Downs, the facility closed its doors in 1976 only to be purchased and converted into a Greyhound racetrack the following year. Later, in 1992, gaming was introduced with the installation of video lottery terminals, forever transforming the racetrack into a racetrack/casino hybrid. Having dropped the name Lincoln Park after a major expansion, the facility is known today as Twin River. In August 2009, Twin River suspended live racing, but reopened with different kennel operators.
The Rhode Island Greyhound Owners Association (RIGOA) was conceived in 1980 to protect the interests of Greyhound racing in the Ocean State by lobbying in the capital. At the time, the state of Rhode Island was preparing to tax the racing kennels out of existence, and something had to be done to preserve the sport. Thus, the RIGOA was created and sanctioned by Lincoln Park, Rhode Island’s sole Greyhound racetrack, to fight the tax case, later winning in court.
By 1990, the RIGOA had turned into a genuine lobbying force that was dealing with multiple legislative issues. Yet, at the same time, the association was morphing into something else altogether: a benevolent group serving the needs of retired racing Greyhounds as well as Rhode Island’s underprivileged citizens.
In recent years, the RIGOA has donated around $100,000 annually to Greyhound adoption efforts, plus another $150,000 to local charities. The single biggest recipient of the RIGOA’s benefaction is the Lincoln Greyhound Adoption Program, founded in late 1994 and later known as Twin River Greyhound Adoption. To get the organization started, the RIGOA paid for an adoption kennel in the secure Lincoln Park kennel compound, as well as a brand-new van to provide transportation. Electricity, telephone service, food for the retired racers, and even furniture expenses are also covered by the owners’ association.
Summing up the relationship, adoption director June Bazar said, "Whatever we need, we get. Our kennel wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the RIGOA. All they care about is what’s best for the dogs, and I love them like family." With their combined efforts, approximately two hundred retired racing Greyhounds were adopted through the Twin River Greyhound Adoption Program each year, allowing the racetrack to enjoy a 100 percent adoption rate while it was hosting live racing.
In Massachusetts, the Wonderland and Raynham Greyhound Parks worked in conjunction with one another to host an annual Greyhound Adoption Expo at their respective facilities in Revere and Raynham. The expos drew some 450 attendees, and the schedule of events included a mock race—called a “fun run”—for retired racing Greyhounds, an amateur racing demonstration, speakers, raffles, racetrack tours, and even weeklong gigs as helpers in a racing kennel as prizes for some lucky adoption representatives.
NORTHEASTERN STYLE | photogallery