George Elsworth Smith (July 13, 1862 – February 1, 1905) was an American gambler and Thoroughbred horse racing enthusiast who became a multi-millionaire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

[6] Smith was a notoriously reticent and shy individual that only granted one interview during his lifetime, in which he relayed only information pertaining to racing matters.

[11] Consequently, much of the published biographical information on Pittsburgh Phil's early life, his rise to fame and the reasoning behind his methods on the track comes from interviews with his nephew, James McGill, who was a close confidant in the ten years preceding George Smith's death.

He also bet on the outcomes of National League baseball games in Pittsburgh pool halls and would attribute his often sizable winnings to pay raises at the cork factory.

In the fall of 1879, Smith placed his first bet on a 5:1 odds horse named Gabriel running in a race at the Brighton Beach racetrack at Coney Island.

Upon his mother eventually discovering the money, he reasoned with her that he was not really gambling because he was making logical predictions based on the past performances of horses and not merely guessing.

[6] The first horse race that Smith witnessed live was the 1885 Kentucky Derby in which Joe Cotton was the favorite and won at 4:5 odds,[6] but he did not bet on the outcome.

Riley was a Civil War veteran from Brooklyn with prematurely gray hair[1] that owned one of the first clubs in Chicago dedicated to betting on horse racing.

[1] Smith quickly gained a reputation as being one of the most successful "plungers", or men that bet large sums of money on races, in Chicago.

[17] King Cadmus was a fast runner but he had a vicious temperament, seriously injuring several of Smith's employees, in addition to weak legs and was sold as a three-year-old in 1892.

[18] Parvenu (sired by Uncas, out of Necromancy) was purchased by Smith in 1891 as a two-year-old and was initially considered to be a poor racing prospect by the general public due to his repeated losses early in the season.

However all bets had to be rescinded before the start of the race because there was a miscalculation of the horse handicapping weights, causing the odds on Parvenu to drop to 10:1 in the new pool.

But despite this mishap, Smith was rewarded when the horse won nine consecutive races, netting approximately $200,000 before Parvenu was retired at age four due to a spinal injury.

[20] Smith employed several jockeys on a race-to-race basis during his career as a Thoroughbred owner, including Henry "Skeets" Martin, Fred Taral, Edward Garrison and Samuel Doggett.

Smith was taken with Sloan's unique riding style, later termed the "monkey crouch", that redistributed the rider's weight over the neck and withers and allowed horses to run faster.

[22] However, Smith did not trust the bookmakers at the California tracks and suspected them, as well as the trainers, of rampant cheating and paying off jockeys to not win on certain horses.

Sloan had won several races on Belmar, a gray 5-year old by Belvidere, and felt confident that the horse would win the Brooklyn Handicap, openly criticizing Smith's choice of Howard Mann in front of his other employees.

He admitted to no wrongdoing, and he suspected the ban was a hold-over from Willie Shaw's suspension and resulted from The Jockey Club's increased efforts to remove plungers from their tracks.

[28] Smith continued to make bets, notably securing $60,000 when Africander won the 1903 Suburban Handicap, but had sold his stable to E.E Smatters by the end of the year.

[26] Smith lived in moderation compared to other horsemen of the era, with the only outward display of ostentation being a diamond ring that he would wear to track engagements.

His family assumed that his "nerves" were affected from the stress of his and Shaw's suspension from racing, but Smith had also developed a persistent cough by the early months of 1904.

In October 1904, Smith traveled to the Winyah Sanitarium in Asheville, North Carolina, for treatment of his worsening cough, a result of advanced tuberculosis.