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When you load up your favorite sportsbook, the breadth and scale of the number of sports covered never ceases to amaze.
Some firms use software that originates from Europe, and so that’s why you can see sports like cricket, snooker and rugby listed in the A-Z on their website and app.
One of the sports that catches the eye of some punters is greyhound racing, which is exactly as it sounds – this particular breed of dog can run tremendously fast, and they chase a mechanical ‘lure’ around the track at remarkable speeds.
The reason why you may not have heard of greyhound racing before is that it’s a sport that has dwindled in popularity in the past 30 years, and today there are only two tracks in the whole of America hosting the sport.
But in the UK and other parts of the world, it continues to flourish – hence why the sportsbooks offer greyhound racing betting from these international markets. You can wager on meetings that take place pretty much every day, and even place futures bets on the major races like the English Greyhound Derby.
You can bet on the greyhounds in much the same way you might in horse racing – i.e. it’s not just about the win. You can try each way and ‘to place’ wagers, back one dog to beat another in head-to-head fashion and, if you’re feeling extremely confident, you can get stuck into the Exacta and Trifecta options… these require you to correctly guess the finishing order of the first two or three greyhounds home.
So there’s plenty of action and drama to enjoy, and at those sportsbooks which offer international greyhound betting you will find a steady stream of races on most days during the week.
If you want to focus on American greyhound racing, you’ll have to be quick…
The Sun Going Down
While not all readers will be familiar with greyhound racing, at one time or another – and chiefly in the 1980s and 90s during the sport’s prime – there were ‘dog tracks’ in 19 different states.
That number has shrunk in the decades that have passed since, and the sport was dealt a hammer blow in 2018 when law-makers in Florida offered a constitutional amendment that basically outlawed greyhound racing in the state altogether – that was overwhelmingly supported by voters.
And so, in the blink of an eye, the sport came to a grinding halt – between 2018 and 2020, the remaining 14 greyhound tracks all closed their doors to the public, and since then racing has slipped out of the mind’s eye of sports fans to some tune.
Image by Herbert Aust from Pixabay
Further closures in Arkansas and Iowa have hardly helped matters, and today just two greyhound racing venues remain – the Mardi Gras Casino and Resort and the Wheeling Island Hotel-Casino-Racetrack, both in West Virginia.
Whether you are a fan or not, it has to be considered something of a shame that a sport that dates back to the 1800s will simply no longer exist, be it due to financial concerns or the pressures imposed by animal cruelty campaigners.
So, if you want to give greyhound betting a try, there really is no time like the present.
