Fern Neture

Many who saw you run insist that you were the greatest female racer of all time. You could go all distances, and many considered you the best female stretch runner of your time.

A 70-pound brindle, you became known to race fans as Fern Nature, although your original registered name was Fern Neture.

As a little sister to Rural Rube, you made your entry to racing just as convincingly as the Rube did in his heyday.

While older brother Rube was winding up his career in Florida in 1940, you showed your first signs of immortality by dividing the NCA’s Spring Sapling Stake with a trio of other entries owned by the late R.B. Bud Carroll, who also owned Rural Rube. You joined the Carroll racing string at Wonderland that summer and first established yourself as a star during the following fall and winter meeting at Miami’s Biscayne Kennel Club.

Here you beat everything in sight. You captured the Biscayne Derby, moved across town to Flagler, and won the Flagler Futurity Stake and the Flagler Derby in 1941. In the following two seasons, you won two inaugurals and two more derbies to make it three straight derby triumphs, a feat never before equaled.

Full details of your racing career probably will never be documented. But your greatness is assured by being elected to the Greyhound Hall of Fame. Appropriately, you join your illustrious older brother among the immortals of the greyhound sport.