Gold

On Thursday January 4, SAM WEINAPPLE; beloved husband of the late Fay Weinapple (nee Edelman); loving father of Abraham Weinapple and the late Bertha "Bobby" Gold; devoted father-in-law of Eddie Gold and the late Anita L. Weinapple; special friend of Leslie Blum and Amy Gold; loving grandfather of Diana and Richard Hegmann, Gary and Lisa Weinapple, Gigi and Max Boam, Michael and Robin Gold; loving great-grandfather of Hunter Hegmann, Cory and Kyle Weinapple,...

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- With just two weeks to go before the 125th Kentucky Derby, a full field of 14 runners will go postward in today's 18th renewal of the $378,700 Lexington Stakes at Keeneland.The Grade II, 1 1/16-mile event will attract more than 11 starters for the first time.Finder's Gold heads the field as the tepid 7-2 favorite from the No. 7 hole, with David Flores up. Flores guided the son of Seeking The Gold to a four-length victory in an allowance race at Santa Anita two weeks ago in his first time aboard the colt.

Only a classic stretch duel between Jack's Gold and Wind Quest in the $55,300 Honor Guard Stakes yesterday could breathe some life into a rather uneventful Memorial Day racing card at Pimlico.Jack's Gold roared past Wind Quest late in the stretch and scored a three-quarter-length victory in the featured 10th race over 1 1/8 miles on turf that only had five entries.Farwell Look, La Reine's Terms and Essential were all scratched, leaving Jack's Gold a 1.30-1 favorite and Wind Quest a 7-1 choice.

ZURICH, Switzerland -- A long-awaited Swiss report about wartime dealings in Nazi gold concluded that Swiss National Bank officials knew that some gold sent to Switzerland had been looted from occupied areas and confirmed allegations that the gold included some stolen from Holocaust victims.The report, commissioned by the Swiss government and issued yesterday by an international panel of historians, said Swiss bank officials turned a blind eye toward the origins of much of the gold, which included jewelry and coins belonging to Jews sent to concentration camps and death.

MANILA, Philippines -- If Imelda Marcos is to be believed, her husband, the dictator, bricked up his family home with lead-covered gold bars.If the Philippine Central Bank is to be believed, the amount of gold the Marcos family allegedly hoarded would have required a convoy of trucks to move. Its size would have exceeded all the gold reserves ever kept in the bank's vaults.If a private investigator is to be believed, $7 billion worth of the Marcos gold held by Marcos-family front companies is navigating through Swiss accounts or has been laundered already.

HAMAR, Norway -- This is what it is like to race against Bonnie Blair:"It's hard to come in first," Canada's Susan Auch said."She's like Carl Lewis," American Chantal Bailey said."

In 16 unremarkable concrete bunkers built by the Army for a war with Hirohito and Hitler, the United States has begun assembling about 50 tons of plutonium, a vast stockpile of one of the most expensive materials ever produced and perhaps the most important to safeguard. The Department of Energy says the bunkers, each about the size of a two-car garage, are going to be used for interim storage, meaning six or seven years.But plutonium, which was invented by the Energy Department's predecessor, the Manhattan Project, may turn out to be the hardest thing on Earth to dispose of. And at the Energy Department, "interim" can have an elastic meaning.

THERE is a town actually called El Dorado deep in what is known as the Guayana Shield, the site of a modern-day Venezualan gold rush. Fifteenth century Spanish conquistadors chased the legend of a place of fabulous riches as assiduously as others sought the fountain of youth. And, lo and behold, they might have been not too far off the mark.According to a report issued by the Institute of the Americas, Venezuala's portion of the Guayana Shield, a geological formation it shares with neighboring countries, is estimated to contain $105 billion in gold reserves.

Wherever Lloyd "Butch" Keaser speaks, at wrestling clinics or IBM functions or to high school groups, he shares a bittersweet experience with his audience.Keaser won a silver medal in wrestling at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal -- after entering his final match with a virtual lock on a gold.A graduate of Brooklyn Park High and the Naval Academy, Keaser was in position to win the gold even if he lost his last match to the Soviet Union's Pavel Pinigin. The rub, the confusing part, was that he couldn't afford to lose to Pinigin by more than seven points.

Theresa Vermillion of Harwood won the Women's National Duckpin Association's Tournament at White Oak Lanes by defeating Betty Caputo in the championship match, 176-131.Vermillion, who was top seeded with 838 pins in the qualifying rounds, took home the first prize of $1,200 and Caputo of Pasadena won second prize of $600.Caputo began the up-the-ladder matches by defeating Linda Gosewisch ($265) of Baltimore, 153-152, and disposed of Diane Jasper ($400) of Laurel, 165-146, before losing to Vermillion.

Last Sunday we identified 14 athletes from Maryland who won medals in the Summer Olympics. Below are others who earned medals at Summer Games. TOMMY HANNAN *2000 *Swimming *Hannan won gold as a member of the 400-meter medley relay team in Sydney. He helped the U.S. team reach the final by swimming in the preliminaries and earned gold when the relay unit won in world-record time. A 1998 graduate of Mount St. Joseph, Hannan was a 17-time All-American at the University of Texas. He coaches swimming at the University of Washington.

They range from a shooting specialist to one of the great sprinters of his generation. The former Maryland Summer Olympians who have won medals are listed below. Despite exhaustive research, it's possible we left someone out, so let us know at sports@baltsun.com. Theresa Andrews 1984 Swimming The two-time gold medalist was the first Olympic star to come from the North Baltimore Aquatic Club. After winning the 100-meter backstroke, Andrews presented the medal to her brother, Danny, to honor him for his courage after he was paralyzed at the age of 19 in a bicycle accident.

The winner of the Maryland Congressional Delegation Investment-Picking Contest, held annually in this space since 2003, "just got lucky" last year, his spokeswoman suggests. Don't believe it. Congressman Roscoe G. Bartlett, the great-grandfather, physiological scientist, patent holder and Western Maryland Republican who always has a copy of the Constitution in his pocket, has owned and believed in precious metals at least since the early 1990s. His stake in what we can assume is gold and similar items surpassed $250,000 last year as the financial system shuddered and people rushed for the only kind of investment politicians and central bankers can't mess up. Gold rose 30 percent in 2007 to $834 an ounce.

Good morning -- Kimmie Meissner -- So you found something in gold while shopping in Reading.

Gardening has long been a passion of Mary Gold. When the librarian moved to Columbia nearly three decades ago, she was disappointed to find that her backyard was too shady to grow vegetables. These days, she finds time to garden several days a week, and grows enough vegetables and herbs to share with her friends and family. Gold, 61, is one of 114 gardeners who lease plots at the Lake Elkhorn Community Gardens in Owen Brown village of Columbia. Not only have the Community Gardens offered Gold a place to follow her passion for the past 25 years, they also have provided a place for friendships to grow.

At just the moment when we think we can't endure another day, let alone another month, of cold weather, it is home-and-garden-show season. For the price of a ticket, we are drawn into warm, moist, sweet-smelling and cavernous buildings where, surrounded by blooming gardens, we can pretend summer has arrived. Double your pleasure this weekend with the opening of both the Philadelphia Flower Show - the granddaddy of them all - at the Philadelphia Convention Center and the Maryland Home & Garden Show at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium.

Eli Gold voted for former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. twice, but one Sunday afternoon the insurance executive is sitting in his Pikesville office, jerking open the pages of a newspaper and calling him wrong. "There was something in today's paper that really, really upset me," Gold begins, in a measured tone. He is not talking taxes or slots - Gold is fingering the quality that eludes many conservatives in a state where liberals dominate: a measure of faith. "Given the trend lines here ... there's not a place for someone with my views in political life in Maryland," Gold reads, quoting Ehrlich in one of his last interviews as governor.

On Thursday January 4, SAM WEINAPPLE; beloved husband of the late Fay Weinapple (nee Edelman); loving father of Abraham Weinapple and the late Bertha "Bobby" Gold; devoted father-in-law of Eddie Gold and the late Anita L. Weinapple; special friend of Leslie Blum and Amy Gold; loving grandfather of Diana and Richard Hegmann, Gary and Lisa Weinapple, Gigi and Max Boam, Michael and Robin Gold; loving great-grandfather of Hunter Hegmann, Cory and Kyle Weinapple,...

Now, everybody is tired of the losing. There's no more point in gloating when the U.S. basketball team and its despised NBA players come home without the gold in yet another major international competition. No, this isn't funny anymore. This group did things the right way, and it got them nowhere, relatively speaking. No matter how much the world has caught up, no matter how much more other national teams play together than our hastily assembled all-star teams, the U.S. is supposed to be as good as gold in basketball every time.

Las Vegas -- Armed with a relatively small stack of chips and getting few playable hands, Rockville insurance agent Rhett Butler mostly folded his way to more than $3.2 million by finishing fifth in the World Series of Poker Texas Hold 'em World Championship that ended yesterday. The marquee event of poker was won by a former show business agent from Malibu, Calif., Jamie Gold, who pocketed a record $12 million after he personally eliminated seven of his eight competitors at the final table.