Fair Hill

When: Today, first post 1 p.m. Site: Fair Hill in Cecil County, junction of routes 273 and 213 Directions from Baltimore: Take I-95 North to second exit after Susquehanna River toll (Route 272). Take Route 272 north about five miles until a traffic light at routes 272 and 273. Turn right on Route 273 east toward Newark, Del. Go five miles to traffic light at routes 273 and 213. Entrance is on the right.

Patricia du Pont, founder of the Fair Hill Pony Club who was active in animal rescue work, died Feb. 16 of complications from a stroke at her home in Fairview, Cecil County. She was 94. The daughter of Archibald du Pont, who had been CEO of the Delaware Trust Bank, and Elizabeth Hayward du Pont, a homemaker, she was born and raised in Wilmington, Del. She was a graduate of St. Timothy's School. An accomplished horsewoman, show rider and avid fox hunter, Miss du Pont enjoyed fox hunting with the Elkridge-Harford Hunt Club, and hunted with her own pack of foxhounds.

Tucked in the northeast corner of Maryland, a sprawling yet unassuming complex has become the focus of the horse racing world during its most important season. The Fair Hill Training Center is currently home to Animal Kingdom, the 21-1 long shot who just won the Kentucky Derby. All eyes are fixed on the muscular, chestnut brown colt as he readies for Saturday's Preakness Stakes. A victory at Pimlico Race Course would give him a clear shot at a Triple Crown, a feat not accomplished since 1978.

Team Valor International, owner of 2011 Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom, has announced that Maryland-based trainer Graham Motion is once again hoping to prep the horse for a run in the $10 million Dubai World Cup next spring. Animal Kingdom finished a charging second in the Breeders' Cup Mile on Nov. 3, despite not racing for 259 days while recovering from a small fracture -- his second such injury since the 2011 Belmont. The colt stood in Motion's barn in Fair Hill for the beginning of the year, as Motion trained his best 3-year-olds toward this year's Kentucky Derby.

Point-to-point races at Fair Hill, postponed last week due to rain, have been rescheduled Sunday at 1 p.m. More than 100 entries from Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania have been received for five timber races and two flat races.

Dr. John R. S. Fisher's Sassello goes for his fourth 1994 steeplechase win today in the featured open claiming hurdle at the Fair Hill Races near Elkton.The horse is one of three thoroughbreds entered which is trained by Baltimore County horseman Jack Fisher, who ranks second in the national steeplechase-training standings to perennial leader Jonathan Sheppard. Sheppard has six horses entered today at Fair Hill.For the first time, the Fair Hill race card is being run on a Sunday and is being held in conjunction with the Fair Hill International, a three-day equestrian and driving event.

If you haven't purchased tickets for the Fair Hill Country/Bluegrass Festival scheduled for Aug. 10 in Cecil County, you can forget it. The festival is sold out.All 18,800 tickets to the festival, featuring The Judds, Ricky Van Shelton, Shelby Lynne, other performers, exhibits, workshops and children's activities, are gone, according to Jody Albright, director of the Governor's Office of Art and Culture."

FAIR HILL -- Olympic veteran David Green of Australia leads David O'Connor of The Plains, Va., by two-tenths of one penalty after two days of the M&M's U.S. Equestrian Team Fall Three-Day Event Championship at Fair Hill International.Green completed the endurance phase with no jumping and four-tenths of a time penalty to take the lead with a two-phase score of 55.2 on Chatsby, a 12-year-old thoroughbred. The jumping phase is today.Jim Fairclough of Newton, N.J., leads the USET Four-in-Hand Driving Championship, and Mark Schofield of Millbrook, N.Y., leads the Schering Plough/American Horse Shows Association Singles Championship.

After knocking on the door for the past couple of years, Tom Voss of Monkton heads into the final card of the spring steeplechase season at the Fair Hill Races today sharing first place for the national training title with perennial leader Jonathan Sheppard of Unionville, Pa.Each has won 12 races although Voss has accomplished the feat by running less than half the number of horses that Sheppard has started.Each runs five jumpers today on the Fair Hill card and is being pursued closely by Jack Fisher, also of Monkton, who has saddled 11 winners and has three Fair Hill starters.

Drought-like conditions during the summer not only hurt Maryland farmers, but has had an adverse affect on a state horse racing event.Today the Fair Hill Race Course near Elkton presents a fall program of six races instead of the usual eight because there are not enough horses to fill the card.Race director Gregg Morris said hard turf conditions have prevented local steeplechase horsemen, who train mostly on their own farms, from properly preparing their animals."They told me they simply couldn't get them fit enough or school them over jumps because the ground is too hard to train them on," Morris said.

Belmont winner Union Rags will not race again this year because of a minor tendon injury in his left front leg, veterinarian Kathy Anderson confirmed in a release Wednesday. He last trained July 6 at his Fair Hill base and was presented Tuesday with a “mild filling of his left forelimb” after that work, according to the statement. An ultrasound revealed that the injury occurred during Friday's work and has not been an ongoing problem. “The prognosis for full return to racing is excellent and he is scheduled to undergo treatment and therapy immediately with the goal of keeping his options open for 2013,” Anderson said in the statement.

A children's shop consignment sale will be held today (Friday) from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.; and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Shops of Perryville, Suite 24. Congratulations to the Perryville Major Softball team on their win at the opening game of states. See you at the 2012 Cecil County Fair to be held July 20 to 28 in Fair Hill. The 5th annual benefit 5K run/walk "Walk for Life" will be Saturday, Oct. 6 on the Ma & Pa Trail. This event is to benefit Alpha's Glory.

Deputed Testamony is 32-years-old. His dark brown coat is shaggy, and his biggest excitement is going into his paddock at Bonita Farm for three or four hours of grazing each day. He is a pensioner, an icon. The oldest living winner of a Triple Crown race. But when Billy Boniface looks at the horse in his paddock, he sees the striking colt that was born and trained at the family farm and raced to victory in the 1983 Preakness - the last horse bred or trained in Maryland to do so. "Oh my gosh, I still get goose bumps when I look at him and remember that day," said Boniface, who was 18 then and had just taken over the breeding operation at the farm.

His day-to-day work has not changed. The routine for Graham Motion is no different now than it was in the early 1990s, when he first became a thoroughbred trainer. "We send them out there, see how they are doing, take what we can from what we see and do it again the next day," Motion said last week. He spoke from the grounds at the Fair Hill Training Center, a bucolic full-service facility nestled near the northeast corner of the state. Motion, who has pointed Kentucky Derby fourth-place finisher Went the Day Well to Saturday's 137th running of the Preakness Stakes, has settled in here as one of the most respected in his field.

A steady, cool wind swept across the track at the Fair Hill Training Center Friday as two trainers prepared colts to run in next Saturday's 137 th Preakness. Went the Day Well, the fourth-place finisher in the Kentucky Derby trained by Graham Motion, and Teeth of the Dog, trained by Michael Matz, went out early this morning. It was Went the Day Well's first trip to the track since running in Kentucky; he galloped a mile. “He looked good, did well,” Motion said. “I continue to be impressed with him.” Went the Day Well will continue jogging at Fair Hill until early next week, when he'll ship to Pimlico to get accustomed to the new surroundings.

Originally, trainer Doug O'Neill had planned to keep Kentucky Derby winner I'll Have Another at posh Churchill Downs. But during a long night of celebrating - O'Neill, predictably enough, copped to uttering the name of his horse many times to the bartender - the California trainer and the colt's connections decided otherwise. He will ship to Pimlico Monday and is expected to arrive around 5 p.m. to prepare for the Preakness, second leg of the Triple Crown. “We just figured getting over there and getting settled in would be a good idea,” O'Neill said this morning, at a mostly quiet track.

FAIR HILL -- Derek di Grazia of Pebble Beach, Calif., riding Our Busby, took the lead in the third annual Fair Hill International three-day event in Fair Hill.Di Grazia, who won at the wild horse championships in Phoenix, Ariz., in March, captured the dressage phase with a score of 44.Michael Plumb of Wenham, Mass., the 1990 Fair Hill champion, placed second with a 48, riding Adonis.Seven-time U.S. Rider of the Year Bruce Davidson, of Unionville, Pa., finished third on Happy Talk with a score of 50.A crowd of 1,500 watched the dressage.

FAIR HILL - Olympic champion David O'Connor won his fifth U.S. Equestrian Team fall eventing championship with a penalty-free stadium jumping ride yesterday. O'Connor, the Sydney Olympics individual gold medalist, finished with a three-phase score of 58.8 penalties after completing his ride fault-free on The Native. It was the fourth outright title in the event for the rider from The Plains, Va. O'Connor also won in 1995 as the top American finisher behind Australian David Green. Australian Phillip Dutton, the defending champion and two-time Olympic team gold medalist, was the event's last entry and entered the ring on Cayman Went with a score of 58.4 penalties.