Horses

The last man to take a horse to Belmont with a chance to snag the elusive final gem in the Triple Crown has some advice for Doug O'Neill. Stay true to the horse. "I think trainers going around asking other people what they should do, looking for how to handle it, that's stupid," Rick Dutrow, trainer of Big Brown in 2008, said in a phone interview Sunday. "It's got to be about your horse. Whatever anybody else did doesn't matter. You know your horse. " O'Neill, trainer of Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner I'll Have Another, has already disregarded common wisdom over the past three weeks.

Marylanders interested in owning thoroughbred horses can purchase shares in six racing investment companies founded by Frank Stronach, the owner of Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course . The stock offering began earlier this month, allowing investors in several states — including Maryland, California and New York — to own a piece of a thoroughbred for $10 a share. Each company plans to raise revenue by racing its horses until November 2013 and then by selling them. After the sale, the net proceeds would be distributed to shareholders, though the prospectus warns potential investors that owning racehorses involves a "high degree of risk.

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.

Kentucky has the Derby. Maryland, of course, is home to the Preakness Stakes. And Pennsylvania boasts the Devon Horse Show and Country Fair, an annual celebration of all things equestrian that dates back well over a century. "It started as a one-day horse show in 1896," says Leonard A. King, Jr., 80, a longtime leader in the equestrian community who chairs the event. "We're now in the 116th year, and we'll go for 11 days. Over the years, we've had presidents, celebrities and visitors from across the country, and foreign countries, in attendance.

If the Black Eyed Susan were a race horse, it would be a sprinter. It makes one strong move, then fades quickly. The strong move occurs this weekend when the cocktail will be in demand at Pamlico Race Track, during both the running of the Black Eyed Susan Stakes on Friday and the Preakness Stakes on Saturday. Over these two days, about 25,000 servings of the libation, poured into commemorative glasses, will be sold at $8 apiece, track officials say. But as soon as Preakness weekend ends, so does the does the local thirst for the Susan.

Last year, 8.8 million viewers saw NBC's coverage of the Preakness. That's the kind of big-tent mass audience that makes the race one of Baltimore's showcase events. And that doesn't count the hundreds of thousands who will watch pre- and post-race coverage on the NBC Sports Network cable channel. But how Baltimore is seen by all those eyeballs largely depends on how NBC Sports chooses to cover the race and related events starting Saturday at 2:30 p.m on NBC Sports Network. NBC's network coverage of the race starts at 4:30 p.m. and runs until 6:30 p.m., with a closing half hour from 6:30 to 7 on NBC Sports Network.

Kevin Plank can't help himself. The Under Armour CEO might know, in his heart of hearts, that his horse is a long shot against the world's finest 3-year-old thoroughbreds. His farm manager, Tom Mullikin, describes the dark bay colt as more "grinder" than star. But Plank's own rise, from blindly ambitious college kid to billionaire apparel mogul, is an underdog tale. So he can't help but play Joe Namath and talk big about his colt's chances in the 137th Preakness Stakes. "Tommy, did you guarantee on Tiger Walk?"

Here are our picks for what horses to bet in the 2011 Preakness Stakes: Race 1 10:45 a.m. Analysis: Expect Boreal Forest to set the early fractions, as he has in his previous starts. He will have less competition on the lead than in previous efforts. As a result, he could carry his speed a long way. He is tested at this level, so the class is no problem. Issues and Answers comes in off just a maiden win, but he did win at a good level and should compete well here.

They might not have rivaled the revelry in the winner's circle after Saturday's Preakness, but the lines in front of the tellers' windows at Pimlico Race Course were abuzz with fans shouting in excitement about their winning tickets. Rick Digrigoli , of Hoover, Ala., left the window folding bills into his wallet, the result of an exacta bet on top two finishers I'll Have Another and Bodemeister. Digrigoli has been coming to the Preakness with friends for 17 years, but his win of about $46 on a $5 bet wasn't the result of experience.

Mike Smith appeared dazed in the moments after his horse, Bodemeister, was again beaten by Kentucky Derby winner I'll Have Another - this time by a neck in Saturday's Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course . The veteran jockey wore the frozen smile of a man hardly able to fathom what had just transpired. "I swear I don't know how he ran me down, man," Smith said after trainer Bob Baffert approached in the fading sunlight. "You did a good job," the 59-year-old trainer told the 46-year-old jockey, a fellow Hall of Famer and former Preakness winner who recently passed 5,000 career victories.

The last man to take a horse to Belmont with a chance to snag the elusive final gem in the Triple Crown has some advice for Doug O'Neill. Stay true to the horse. "I think trainers going around asking other people what they should do, looking for how to handle it, that's stupid," Rick Dutrow, trainer of Big Brown in 2008, said in a phone interview Sunday. "It's got to be about your horse. Whatever anybody else did doesn't matter. You know your horse. " O'Neill, trainer of Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner I'll Have Another, has already disregarded common wisdom over the past three weeks.

This year marks the second Preakness for both Dave Bowser and his girlfriend, Angela Alexander -- and both expect this experience to be quite different from their first. Bowser, 28, of Harbor East, first came to Pimlico while in college at Penn State. He said he spent a good amount of time then in the more rowdy infield and decided he'd "hang out on this side today," gesturing toward the grandstands. "I decided since I'm a big adult, I'll actually dress up a little bit," he said, tugging on his lightly-colored plaid tie. Alexander, a 29-year-old Silver Spring resident, said her experience in college was similar to Bowser's, and that she too expected to spend less time in the infield this year.

The jockey had raced an Arabian horse only once before and had never met the trainer before. The trainer, a former jockey himself, has never actually mounted an Arabian. The owner is an 18-year-old Shiek who, according to the trainer, knows very little about horses, even Arabians. Experience seemed to be insignificant when it comes to T M Fred Texas, the 5-year-old Arabian who followed a world championship in Dubai in March with a victory Saturday in the first President of United Emirates Cup at Pimlico Race Course . T M Texas paid $4.40.

They might not have rivaled the revelry in the winner's circle after Saturday's Preakness, but the lines in front of the tellers' windows at Pimlico Race Course were abuzz with fans shouting in excitement about their winning tickets. Rick Digrigoli , of Hoover, Ala., left the window folding bills into his wallet, the result of an exacta bet on top two finishers I'll Have Another and Bodemeister. Digrigoli has been coming to the Preakness with friends for 17 years, but his win of about $46 on a $5 bet wasn't the result of experience.

Gov. Martin O'Malley scored the behind-the-scene tour most Preakness fans wish for: an up-close look at the 11 horses in the Stakes Stables. Tom Chuckas, president of the Maryland Jockey Club, walked the governor around the barns, packed high with hay and lined with flower baskets, that house the Preakness racers. O'Malley shook hands with the chiropractor and trainer for I'll Have Another. "He's ready to go," Larry "Thumper" Jones, the chiropractor, said of the Kentucky Derby winner.

- Thoroughbred racing is sometimes called the "sport of kings," but the horse owners and prospective owners sipping red wine at a reception the other night seemed too young to have ascended to an exalted level of royalty. Maybe they could symbolically be earls or viscounts. They looked like recent college graduates too old for the bar scene but too young to yet possess the graying, distinguished, moneyed look commonly associated with the sport's elite. But that was the point.

Albert Lord doesn't like to wait - not in business or on the golf course. The colorful chairman of student loan behemoth Sallie Mae, who's embroiled in a nasty fight over the failed sale of the company, has spent 40 years in the accounting and banking industries. He said that experience should have instilled in him a measure of patience, but it hasn't. Whether in traffic, at the office or on the links, Lord said, he just doesn't like to wait. He can't do much about the first two, but he's got a sure-fire solution for the last one: He's building his own, an 18-hole golf course on land he's acquired amid shuttered tobacco farms and grazing horses in southern Anne Arundel County.

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.

Horse racing's center stage, the place where the industry's best jockeys and trainers reside, is getting crowded. Ramon Dominguez, John Velazquez and current No. 1 jockey Javier Castellano may not be ready to exit stage left. Trainers Todd Pletcher, Bob Baffert and Steve Asmussen might not want to either. But evolution happens in every sport. Here's a look at a few prospects who are making waves in horse racing's next generation. For jockeys, ability and toughness count In the jockey world California-based Joel Rosario, New York-based Rosie Napravnik and Kentucky Derby winner Mario Gutierrez are muscling for space.

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.