Why do people hunt with cheetah rather than other felids?

Cheetah is in many ways a very special cat. Contrary to other felids, it cannot climb trees. In its hunting technique it relies on its exceptional speed. The cheetah stalks as near its prey as possible and catches it after a short distance pursuit (not exceeding 500 m), thanks to its ability to run as fast as 110 km/h, while its typical prey, the gazelle, doesn’t exceed 80 km/h.
This high performance predator is on the other hand quite a fragile animal. This is the reason why it tries to avoid danger and unnecessary risks. The cheetah never attacks any animal able to defend itself. It relies exclusively on the effects of sudden and intensive effort implied by fast running, which provoke a shock in its victim’s organism. This is the reason why, most probably, the cheetah will be instinctively unwilling to attack any living creature which doesn’t run away fast enough from it, including the human. The cheetah also avoids any confrontation with potentially stronger rivals, connected to the privilege of eating the animal it caught. In natural conditions, the cheetah is often dispossessed of its prey by stronger opportunists, such as packs of hyenas.
This particular hunting strategy and behaviour is the reason why the cheetah can be tamed much easier, compared with other species of felids, such as the leopard and the panther, which look quite similar, but are very different in terms of behaviour and prospects of a good relationship with humans. Even if the other felids were occasionally used for hunting in the past centuries, it often led to accidents in which the human hunter could become the prey of his feline attorney. On the contrary, the cheetah can be, with relative safety, kept by its human owner as an animal companion or even as a pet. This is the reason why the cheetah, accompanying a leader or a high status person in many circumstances not related directly to the hunting, could be used as a powerful social symbol in different cultures.