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Back while he was pursuing a diploma from Bonner Springs High School and then a degree in secondary education at Pittsburg State University, raising and training greyhounds was hardly paramount in the mind of Jim Martin.

"I didn't even know what a greyhound was, to be honest," Martin said.

Today he's a self-admitted addict - and a runaway leader in stakes wins at The Woodlands.

His latest - the thirteenth of his career - came in the running of the 2008 Great American Greyhound Futurity on Memorial Day when Flying Tanadak went box to wire in the 15th annual running of the world's richest open stakes race. The win in a fast 29.91 seconds led a Flying Eagles sweep of the top three places as Flying Mancini finished second and Flying Big Jim third.

With two wins and a fifth in qualifying, Flying Tanadak was only fifth among betting favorites but never trailed in breaking from the No. 3 box.

"Mancini broke pretty good from the two hole but Big Jim came slashing down to the rail from the No. 4 and clipped Mancini in the rear," Martin said.

By the time they cleared the first turn, Tanadak was building a five-length lead that hard-charging Mancini whittled down to one at the finish.

Not only was the win Martin's thirteenth stakes win at The Woodlands, it was his fourth Great American Greyhound Futurity win in the last five years. Atascocita Leroy started the streak in 2004 followed by Atascocita Smoke in 2005 and Flying Britt in 2006. Not included in his stakes resume are two wins in consolation stakes races.

"Winning makes you want to win again; you almost feel like a drug addict. You feel so good, you want to do it again," Martin admitted. "But winning is not the only thing, just competing. That's the best part of the whole thing."

Martin has had his share of losses. It took him seven years before he registered his first stakes win.

"A lot of times when you get beat you aren't happy but if a dog busts his tail and runs his rear off, you're still proud," Martin said. "Mancini ran his tail off in this year's Shamrock 660 but he got beat by a better dog in CS Beemer. Sometimes you have a dog that's head-and-shoulders better but usually you have to get lucky, and I've been luckier than I deserve to be, quite honest. But I can remember some races early on I didn't have luck."

That luck will probably continue because while GAGF finalists Flying Tanadak, Flying Big Jim and Flying Westover have moved on to Wheeling, budding superstar Flying Mancini is staying around for the Kansas-Bred Sprint and 3/8ths Kansas Cup at The Woodlands before heading for the American Derby in Lincoln. A finalist in the Shamrock 660 in just her sixth start ever, Mancini came back a month later to win all five races in the Kansas-Bred Countdown capped by a 4 1/2-length win over Kansas Buzzer in the final.

"Mancini and Mulberry Jack (Martin's first big stakes winner) are the most complete dogs I've ever been around," Martin said. "Flying Stanley was probably the best because of pure speed and he was just on all the time. But Mancini and Mulberry Jack have the same qualities. They're smart, tough, will do anything you ask of them. Stanley probably couldn't go the distance, but Mancini and Mulberry Jack can both go the distance. They're just the most complete; they don't have a flaw."

Growing up in Bonner Springs, Martin was a two-time all-league pick in football and competed in basketball and track where he threw the shot put and discus, "And ran in the fat man's relay (thrower's relay)," he added proudly. "We were fast."

Earning a football scholarship as an offensive tackle at Pittsburg State, he played three years during an era the Gorillas were building into a perennial national power.

"In my sophomore year, we lost in the national NAIA championship game 3-0 to Elon, N.C.," Martin recalled. "The game was played about Dec. 18 in North Carolina and it was really cold. We also won the league a couple of times."

With degree in hand, Martin's plans to teach and coach were superceded by a chance for bigger paydays loading and unloading trucks as a member of the Teamsters for three years and a job with a company making ice cream containers before moving to Texas to marry his high school sweetheart. However, when that relationship ended, he returned to Kansas City in 1994 and started frequenting The Woodlands with buddies after softball games.

"I've always liked animals and I just became enamored with the greyhounds," Martin said. "They would show a video clip on the monitors of a trainer's apprenticeship school in Arizona and I thought that would be an interesting thing to do but I never did."

Instead, he adopted a greyhound named Odd Boone and got to know Jan Dempsey, who was running an adoption program for the track.

"She asked me if I would like to go see the kennels and what they did, and I said sure. It was so neat and so unique," he said.

It also led to a conversation with Tony Hughes of the Hughes Kennel who told Martin he needed a helper.

"I told him I'd love to try," Martin said.

The rest is history.

After six months, Jerry Tropf of the Thunderbird Kennel went looking for help.

"I learned everything from him," Martin said. "I told him 'I want your job, I want to learn. I'll come if you teach me,' and he said absolutely. He was very good, very knowledgeable and trusting."

He would learn enough to earn his first job as head trainer for Thunderbird in Denver. He spent a year and a half there before returning to Kansas City.

"I got out the dogs for three years and had a regular job," Martin said.

But when Alan Sabell left Ron Beckner's kennel at The Woodlands to run Buckner's kennel in Texas, the opportunity to join the track's most successful kennel ever was too good to turn down. Beckner's subsequent departure opened yet another opportunity: the purchase of Skies The Limit Kennel, which Martin re-named Boone and Noah's Greyhounds.

With Mulberry Jack and Mulberry Jock winning five stakes races in a little over a year in 2002-03, Martin's seven-year stakes drought had ended but it wasn't enough to prevent him from calling it quits after a two-year run.

"They had turned down slots and it was just hard to make money with a small kennel so I just shut it down and went back to raising dogs," Martin said.

But he could never shake the on-track action. Mick Childs lured him back to run his Crystal Eagle Kennel, and it resulted in Atascocita Smoke's GAGF win. Bill Elliott was the next to come calling, and Martin won the GAGF with Flying Britt. Finally, Flying Eagles owner Vince Berland, bought out Elliott and immediately made Martin an offer he couldn't turn down.

"He wanted to know if I would stay and with all his great dogs and being great people to work for, it was hard to stay no," Martin said.

That was two years and six stakes wins ago.

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