Dash

When Kisha Jett began competing in track at Hammond, it was obvious to coach Pete Hughes that she possessed sprinting potential.Now a junior, Jett has rocketed to national acclaim as a sprinter, most recently earning a ranking of sixth in the 200-meter dash by Track and Field News.Hughes admittedly is surprised by Jett's sudden thrust into the limelight."She was a raw talent when she came in, and I didn't think someone with her talent would make the impact she has," Hughes said. "The times she's running now, those are times that normally happen in college."

Two messages were sent to Laurel Park from Canada yesterday concerning the $100,000 Laurel Dash.The first told many of 9,728 in attendance that Laurel Dash favorite Grand Continental ran a close second to Breeders' Cup Mile winner Da Hoss, thus his 2-to-1 status. The second was a personal message to trainer John R. S. Fisher about his Laurel Dash hopeful, 3-year-old Mayoumbe.If only the public had known.Mayoumbe rolled to a four-length victory in the dash, making Fisher's Breeders' Cup day one to remember, even if he was in Maryland.

For Bill Donovan, Preakness Day begins before dawn, while a thick fog cover still hangs over Pimlico Race Course and a light, steady mist falls from ashen skies.Donovan, up at 4:30 a.m., gets bad news as he drives on to the Pimlico grounds a few minutes after 5. The track will be closed to morning workouts because of the rain that has fallen overnight.It is bad news because Donovan trains Dash For Dotty, a 3-year-old gelding who is to run in the 117th Preakness later in the day. He wanted the horse to work out in the morning, though, "because he's a bleeder and you're always anxious to keep him moving."

Patrons receive free grandstand admission and a free Maryland racing program today as thoroughbred racing shifts to Laurel Park for the next three months.The schedule through Aug. 22 calls for racing Wednesdays through Sundays, simulcast only on Mondays and closed Tuesdays. Post time is 1: 05 p.m. On Aug. 23, Timonium begins its traditional 10-day meet.The summer racing highlight at Laurel Park is the $300,000 Grade II Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash on July 19. The six-furlong dash, one of the country's top sprints, may lure the Maryland-bred Smoke Glacken, one of the speediest horses in America.

This is the hometown horse, the one Baltimore likes to call its own. There's an immense measure of pride, personal and provincial, exuded by Henry Rosenberg, who is hoping for a kind of happiness he has not even remotely experienced. The smile on his face carries all the anticipated pleasure of a man involved in a Preakness dream that's within a mile and three-sixteenths distance of reality.Racing is a fun game that breaks more hearts than that fictitious, flirtatious girl who is merely a picture on a billboard.

LAUREL -- There are 87 days remaining until the Kentucky Derby on May 2.Several 3 year olds with Maryland connections are among the early nominees, but one Baltimore owned and trained horse has shown he clearly should love the 1 1/4 -mile Derby distance.Dash For Dotty, owned by Henry Rosenberg, the 62 year-old chairman of the board of Crown Central Petroleum, is trained by Pimlico-based Bill Donovan.After a disappointing run in the Jan. 4 Flamingo Stakes at Hialeah, Dash For Dotty came back last Saturday and set a Gulfstream Park record of 1 minute, 49 2/5 seconds over nine furlongs on the grass.

Erin Chance of Canton isn't betting on Inner Harbor traffic anymore. Like a growing number of workers, she's opting to DASH downtown. Brightly colored new blue, green and yellow DASH buses -- an acronym for Downtown Area Shuttle -- whisked 139 riders to their destinations yesterday morning, two weeks and two days after an ambitious federally funded transportation experiment was launched. "That represents about a 50 percent increase," said Patrick Coughlin of Yellow Bus, operations manager of the fledgling system.

WASHINGTON -- Noting firsthand experiences with the Iran-contra and Watergate scandals, two prominent investigators urged Congress yesterday to keep inquiries into activities of top government officials in the hands of prosecutors independent of the White House.Former independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, who investigated the Iran-contra scandal of the Reagan administration, and Sam Dash, who led the Senate Watergate hearings in the 1970s, recommended major revisions in the soon-to-expire independent counsel law, however.

NEW KENT, Va. - Five weeks ago in the Belmont, aboard a 70-1 unknown named Sarava, Edgar Prado dashed California jockey Victor Espinoza's hopes of winning the Triple Crown with War Emblem. Yesterday, Prado bested Espinoza again, this time in the $500,000 Virginia Derby at Colonial Downs. Riding the Bill Mott-trained Orchard Park, Prado crossed the wire 1 1/2 lengths ahead of Espinoza and his mount, the Neil Drysdale-trained Flying Dash. Espinoza's horse in both races was the favorite.

A photo of a jockey and horse was misidentified in yesterday's Sports section. It was a photo of jockey Ron Hansen aboard Bolulight, the sixth-place finisher in Sunday's Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash at Laurel Race Course.The Baltimore Sun regrets the errors.Ladner out-rode Krone.In a few words, that sums up the surprising result yesterday of the Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash at Laurel Race Course.Maryland jockey Clarence "Jo Jo" Ladner rode Montbrook to a half-length victory over Julie Krone on favored Lion Cavern and equaled Housebuster's stakes record of 1 minute, 8 3/5 seconds.