“The Most Modern of Modern Sports: The Secret Runaway Success of Kenneth Gandar-Dower’s Racing Cheetahs”, 2019-04-15 ():
Still, he was as awed as anyone when staff pried open the crates to reveal no fewer than 12 graceful, snarling specimens of Acinonyx jubatus—more commonly known as cheetahs. Each was about 5 feet long, not including the tail, and 2.5 feet tall at the shoulder…The man responsible for the whole affair, playboy adventurer Kenneth Cecil Gandar-Dower, arrived several hours later with the cheetahs’ new trainer, Hooku, in tow…To Sumpter’s bafflement, the legendary animal wrangler—who sometimes went by the Westernized name Raymond Hook—claimed that, once captured, cheetahs could be trained to hunt for sport, or tied up with nothing more than a shoelace and kept as pets.
Gandar-Dower, on the other hand, saw more than utility and companionship in the cheetahs’ spots. He saw opportunity. Like the bongo he’d procured for the London Zoo, exotic animals appreciated in value the farther they traveled from home, and trainable exotic animals even more so. The cheetahs were so receptive to commands, Gandar-Dower declared, that Maharajas in India held formal cheetah races for entertainment—and now, he intended to bring this “most modern of modern sports” to England.
…Many people at the time still believed greyhounds to be the fastest animal in the world, so he also invited a handful of reporters to measure their speed and generate positive publicity. The journalists confirmed for their readers an acceleration of standstill to 50 miles per hour in just 2 seconds, as well as the generally docile nature of the cats. “Even a full-grown cheetah, properly trained, can be relied upon not to turn savage suddenly”, Gandar-Dower was quoted as saying. “A cheetah trained from a cub becomes as tame and affectionate as a dog.”…If the cheetahs didn’t want to run, they simply didn’t—and even when they did, each tired out after only a few hundred yards. In her first race at Romford, Helen covered 265 yards in 15.86 seconds, easily surpassing the top recorded greyhound speed of 16.01 seconds. But when the track was extended to 355 yards, another cheetah named Luis failed to break the existing greyhound record. The sprints were unquestionably impressive, but their brevity was what had allowed the cheetahs to be captured and brought to England in the first place.
…It’s perhaps worth noting that the British journalists celebrating Gandar-Dower’s audacious enterprise were all men, while the Australians who acknowledged Henderson’s hands-on care were both women. But none disputed the magnificence of the cheetahs, who continued to perform regularly at Romford and make guest appearances at other stadiums throughout the winter of 1937. In some ways, however, they were too good. A close match provides more drama than a blowout, and watching a cheetah beat a greyhound by 40 yards or more was, perversely, a bit of a letdown. Even giving the greyhounds a head start couldn’t fully erase the nagging sense that the cheetahs were rubbing their opponents’ snouts in it. So in April of 1938, Henderson and Stewart came up with a new opponent for the cheetahs to race: motorcycles.
The stunt they envisioned would be a relatively safe one, since speedway motorcycles in the 1930s could reliably travel 90 miles per hour—well above the cheetahs’ maximum of 70. But not everyone found the numbers so convincing, and there was always the chance that a stalled motor could bring its deliciously meaty operator to a halt mid-race. Legendary speed champion “Bluey” Wilkinson (a nickname traditionally given to redheads in Australia) was one of several who received a telegram asking “Will you race a cheetah for £5?”, to which he quipped in return, “No, I’ll let him have it.” Other rejections quickly followed. These men were no strangers to peril—Wilkinson became world champion that year despite wearing a full-shoulder plaster cast over his recently snapped collarbone—but cheetahs were apparently a bridge too far. No professional racers would agree to participate.
…It’s possible, however, that a few cheetahs dodged fate: only five of them appeared in their last wartime race at White City Speedway in May of 1940, and the rest may have been sold to wealthy individuals. American actress Phyllis Gordon famously acquired a pet cheetah in London in late 1939, as did a foreign noblewoman named Countess Elvira de Flogny, and the timing makes it plausible that one or both were former racing cheetahs.