Word: racetrack
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...biggest firm of racetrack book makers in the world is Douglas Stuart Ltd., which employs 400 clerks in its entirely legal offices at Stuart House, Shaftesbury Avenue, London. Douglas Stuart, whose motto is "Duggie Never Owes" is not a person but a syndicate. Busiest member of the syndicate is breezy, dapper, dark-haired Sidney Freeman, who once worked with Novelist Edgar Wallace on a South African newspaper, and who would "rather trust an English bricklayer than a foreign nobleman," in the matter of bets. For the last three years. Bookmaker Freeman has been coming...
...almost every sport there is someone whose nickname is "Wild Bill." "Wild Bill" Cummings got his from his father who was a racetrack driver from 1907 to 1921. Young Cummings was born within earshot of the Indianapolis Speedway, learned to distinguish Barney Oldfield's car by its sound, promised his mother that some day he would win the 500-mile race. He gathered speed slowly, first as a Western Union messenger boy, later as a taxidriver. When he was 16, he began driving in motorcycle races, graduated to automobiles two years later. He finished fifth in the 500-mile...
...seen every Derby ever run. In 1875, 14-year-old Matt Winn sat in his father's grocery wagon and watched Aristides win the race. Grocery Boy Matt Winn became Matt Winn, merchant tailor of Covington, Ky. Twenty years ago, Tailor Matt Winn became Colonel Matt J. Winn, racetrack manager. In 1914 he upped the Derby's purse, steadily began to ballyhoo the race into a social and sporting extravaganza. Now, 73, Colonel Winn as president of the American Turf Association operates not only Churchill Downs at Louisville, but Latonia, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, as well...
...brutal than bearbaiting, more spectacular than roulette. Largely because of these advantages, horse racing has long seemed a particularly pernicious sport to those who consider all gambling immoral. At the turn of the Century there started a wave of earnest reform to curtail gambling by putting a stop to racetrack betting. Typical was the history of the reform in New York, where there has generally been more horse racing than anywhere else...
From 1894 to 1908, betting on New York horse races was legal under State law. In 1908 Charles Evans Hughes as a reform Governor outlawed racetrack bets with a statute which also denied betters the right to sue to collect winnings. By 1912, since racing cannot flourish without gambling, a turf track on the golf course of Long Island's Piping Rock Club was the only one functioning in the State. Year later a test case uncovered a loophole in the Hughes law. It was legal for betters to deposit money with a bookmaker before...