Great Race

As summer began last year, with the Grand Prix of Baltimore about three months away, organizers had sold no tickets. They had landed no sponsorships. And they hadn't put out a single advertisement. Financier J.P. Grant and his group, Race On LLC, swooped in to save a troubled race - which one business had left in financial ruin and another failed to even launch - and pulled off what Grant called a "90-day miracle. " This year, they say they won't need divine intervention.

As summer began last year, with the Grand Prix of Baltimore about three months away, organizers had sold no tickets. They had landed no sponsorships. And they hadn't put out a single advertisement. Financier J.P. Grant and his group, Race On LLC, swooped in to save a troubled race - which one business had left in financial ruin and another failed to even launch - and pulled off what Grant called a "90-day miracle. " This year, they say they won't need divine intervention.

It's only a horse race, the way the Olympic Marathon is only a foot race. The eyes of the sporting, betting and horsey worlds will be on Old Hilltop tomorrow at 5:32 p.m. when a horseman's dozen of the best three-year-olds anywhere run counter-clockwise a mile and three-sixteenths for glory, fame, improvement of the breed and millions of dollars in purse and stud fees.It comes in those few magic days in Baltimore when the azaleas of a late spring are at their best, when every neighborhood and institution has a festive fete and when, with a little deftly applied shoe polish, every daisy is a black-eyed susan.

IndyCar announced Sunday night that it will return to Baltimore for a third year. While the city made a five-year commitment to host an IndyCar race, the 2013 race wasn't assured until Tuesday. That's when J.P. Grant , the financier who formed Race On LLC and took over operations of the second Grand Prix of Baltimore about 100 days before the event, reached an agreement on a sanctioning fee with IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard to again hold the race the Sunday before Labor Day. IndyCar's schedule includes 19 races over 16 weekends; three road courses, not including Baltimore, are each hosting two full-length IndyCar races in one weekend.

Danica Patrick couldn't quite believe what was happening Thursday evening. There she was, riding in a golf cart, taking a tour of the city's new 2.03-mile temporary street course, trying to get a feel for the new track that will host Sunday's inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix, when all at once she found herself in the middle of rush hour traffic. "If I was in a car, I think I would have been pretty ticked off," Patrick said. "The light changed and they sent us right into the traffic.

Remember the film "The Great Race" (1965), with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as contending racers in the early automobile era? Ra- dio listeners can tune in a modern version of the event via WXCY-FM (103.7) in Havre de Grace on the Fourth of July.Tydings Park, in this town on the Susquehanna River, is the only Maryland stopover of the third annual "Great American Road Race," in which 100 vintage and antique autos are racing from Ottawa, Canada, to Mexico City.WXCY morning deejays Rico and Burt plan live coverage of the arrival of the cars from 5:30 a.m.-10 a.m. on Tuesday.

Eleanor Simonsick is the first to admit she is well off the pace of her personal-record 32 minutes, 9 seconds she kept in The Great Race 10K in Pittsburgh in 1988.But after layoffs brought on by injury and motherhood, she hopes to have taken the first steps to competing in the United States Olympic Track and Field Trials in June.A stress fracture sidelined Simonsick two weeks after The Great Race, and the birth of son Andrew Kirby Simonsick Green 17 months ago further curtailed her competitive running.

IndyCar announced Sunday night that it will return to Baltimore for a third year. While the city made a five-year commitment to host an IndyCar race, the 2013 race wasn't assured until Tuesday. That's when J.P. Grant , the financier who formed Race On LLC and took over operations of the second Grand Prix of Baltimore about 100 days before the event, reached an agreement on a sanctioning fee with IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard to again hold the race the Sunday before Labor Day. IndyCar's schedule includes 19 races over 16 weekends; three road courses, not including Baltimore, are each hosting two full-length IndyCar races in one weekend.

Richard Blue Jr.'s Sneaks was unhurried early, but when front-running favorite Dawn Princess began to waver, the daughter of Root Boy quickly rallied between horses to wrest the lead and capture the $60,000 Pearl Necklace Stakes for 3-year-old Maryland-bred fillies at Laurel Park. Sneaks and jockey Jennifer Stisted completed the nine furlongs in 1:52 over a firm turf course. Dawn Princess managed to hold onto second, 2 3/4 lengths behind the winner. Late running Find The Tao finished third.

The four-horse field for Saturday's $600,000 Pimlico Special was set yesterday.Pimlico owner Joe De Francis said this year's race is as strong as the six-horse fields of the previous two years."

Let's get the few negatives out of the way first. The threat of rain probably kept the crowds down. There was a re-start controversy that ticked off some of the top drivers. And there were enough wrecks slowing Sunday's Grand Prix of Baltimore to make it feel like the JFX in a snowstorm. But for an event that came together only three months ago after one deadbeat outfit stiffed the city of $1.5 million in taxes and fees and another folded its tent altogether, it wasn't a bad weekend at all. And Ryan Hunter-Reay's dramatic last-second win was a terrific finish for an event that's taken more shots than the Kardashians the past two years.

Ryan Hunter-Reay didn't know what to think or feel after he won Honda Indy Toronto on July 8. It was his third consecutive victory and moved him into the lead of the IZOD IndyCar Series points chase. Will Power, an Australian driver who won the Baltimore Grand Prix last year and finished runner-up in the points standings in 2011, also won three straight races this season. But Hunter-Reay is the first American in six years to achieve that feat, and he has a chance to become the first U.S. champion of the series since Sam Hornish Jr. in 2006.

Maryland-based jockey Mario Pino says he once heard that the great race rider Laffit Pincay would wear his underwear inside out. For luck. Ramon Dominguez, Eclipse Award-winning jockey the last two years, likes to have Perrier water and animal crackers in his jockey room stall. And he puts his left boot on first. Always. They call horse racing the fastest two minutes in sports, but a jockey's preparation begins the night before and continues until the moment the starting gates clang open.

ESPN's Jeannine Edwards started her TV career as an in-track host at Pimlico and Laurel in the early 1990s. “It allowed me to learn television, because I came from a background of  training horses and had no TV experience,” she says. “So I owe a lot of my success and a debt of gratitude to the people in Maryland for giving me a start.” Edwards, who still calls Maryland home, is covering the Preakness for ESPN and ABC this week. Her reports will start appearing Friday on the sports channel and continue through the weekend.

Almost immediately, there was talk of lucky numbers. Kentucky Derby winner I'll Have Another drew the No. 9 post at the draw for the 137th running of the Preakness. After his horse raced from the 19th position -- and became the first to win from that spot -- in Kentucky, Doug O'Neill saw no problem. "Anything with a nine is fine for us," the gregarious trainer of I'll Have Another said. Bodemeister, meanwhile, drew the seventh spot. That, friends joked with trainer Bob Baffert, could work; his son Bode, after all, is 7 years old. But when the talk of good fortune and happy circumstance subsided, slivers of evidence revealing how the race will be run were left.

The head of IndyCar, the car racing league, came to Baltimore on Thursday and assured the city's taxpayers and business owners that this September's Grand Prix would not end up in financial ruin as last year's race did. "There's no room for errors. We have to be successful and the promoter has to be successful," IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard said at the Intercontinental Harbor Court Hotel before showing off the cars and new technologies that would be used in the Labor Day race. "They feel the pressure," Bernard said of the new Grand Prix management team.

Democrat Kweisi Mfume formally conceded to U.S. Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin yesterday, saying he did not think he could gain enough votes with the counting of absentee and provisional ballots to overtake his rival in the race for U.S. Senate. In a written statement issued by his campaign three days after the primary election, Mfume said he would support Cardin, the 10-term congressman, in the general election against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele. Mfume phoned Cardin at noon yesterday to congratulate him, according to a campaign spokesman.

Judiths Wild Rush was elevated to first in yesterday's $100,000 Native Dancer Stakes at Laurel Park after finishing second to Your Bluffing. The Laurel Park stewards listened to a claim of foul lodged by jockey Julian Pimental, who argued that his mount had been bothered by Your Bluffing in the drive to the finish line. They decided in his favor. The revised order of finish became Judiths Wild Rush first, Your Bluffing second and late closing Easy Red third. Judiths Wild Rush broke alertly, then settled in fourth, as Your Bluffing raced just ahead of him in third.

Among the tens of thousands of fans who came this weekend for the inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix were a large number of racing rookies. They were attracted for a variety of reasons -- fast cars, a party atmosphere and the idea of supporting their hometown. For Tim Trochimowicz of Pasadena, it was the free tickets he won in a raffle outside the local Giant supermarket. "There was a band playing outside the Giant and people were putting their cards in for a raffle," Trochimowicz recalled.