Horses

When his first Kentucky Derby horse, Orb, was named the favorite Wednesday, Stuart S. Janney the III was not there to raise his hands triumphantly for the cameras. He won't be in Louisville at all in the days leading to the race. A short phone call with his trainer each day is all the northern Baltimore County resident requires. The rest, he'd rather avoid. "There's a lot of silliness that happens this week," he said Monday. "And I've got paperwork to catch up on. " Janney is instead in New York, where he spends much of his time at the 5th Avenue headquarters of the Bessemer Trust, the wealth management firm of which he is the chairman.

Last year's chase for the Triple Crown ended when trainer Doug O'Neill stepped to a microphone stand in a patch of fenced-in grass next to a barn near the Belmont Park track. Brushing back tears, he announced that a tendon injury would prevent I'll Have Another - the 12th horse to win the first two legs of the Triple Crown since Affirmed last completed the trifecta in 1978 - from going to post the next day. On Saturday, a full field of 20 is expected for the 139th running of the Kentucky Derby and to begin the quest anew.

College junior Steve Moirano has no children of his own, but he played the proud parent Saturday as a pair of foals debuted to a crowd of onlookers at the University of Maryland campus farm. "What was it like?" Brandon Hurn, a sophomore chemical engineering student, asked Moirano, referring to a mare known as Amazin'. "Were you there?" "I actually pulled the foals out," answered Moirano, an animal sciences major planning to go into veterinary medicine. He and a few classmates were on hand to show off the foals - the first born on the farm in 30 years - and answer questions at Maryland Day, the university's annual campuswide showcase.

To co-workers, he's known as The Racing Guy. His neckties have little horses on them, and James Stierhoff has a different one for each day of the week. The walls of his office cubicle at the investment firm Brown Advisory are peppered with news clippings of recent Maryland Hunt Cup races. Stierhoff has won it twice. Saturday, on the lush, rolling hills in Glyndon, he'll try to win a third Hunt Cup aboard the same horse - a feat last achieved in 1967, and only seven times in the 116-year history of the brutal four-mile steeplechase race.

Pimlico Race Course Press box renamed to honor former Sun reporter Kelly Before Sunday's first race, the Pimlico Race Course press box was renamed to include Joe Kelly , who covered horse racing for nearly 70 years before his death in November at age 94. Kelly began his career at The Baltimore Sun in the 1940s, then moved in 1955 to The Washington Star, where he spent the next 26 years. After retiring, he became the publicity director for the Maryland Million and was Pimlico's historical consultant until his death.

When Heat Press last ran in Maryland, he finished third in a three-horse race. Yet his owner - the same man who managed to turn the idea of quick-drying fabric into an athletic apparel empire that brought in nearly $2 billion in revenue last year - spent much of Monday touting the horse's chances against the best 3-year-olds in the country. Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank has never been one to pay the odds much mind. On Monday, he bounced from interview to interview, assuring each camera and recorder of his faith in the inconsistent colt.

Horse racing Retired Hall of Fame trainer Kelly dead at 93 Hall of Fame trainer Thomas J. Kelly died Friday morning at St. Catherine's West Rehabilitation Hospital in Hialeah, Fla., after a brief illness, according to his son, Timothy D. Kelly . He was 93. Kelly, who was born in Pikesville, conditioned 65 stakes winners, including Plugged Nickle, 1980's champion sprinter who won that year's Grade 1 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct Racetrack,...

The day couldn't have turned out better for owner Irv Naylor. And it wasn't too shabby for jockey James Slater, either. With Slater in the saddle, Naylor's Alfa Beat captured the 111th running of the Grand National Steeplechase in Butler, adding a punctuation mark to a four-win performance at the Middleburg (Va.) Spring Races that shot Naylor into the national lead among owners in purses won. All four Naylor horses who prevailed in Virginia were trained by Slater's wife, Brianne.

Security at Pimlico's historic Preakness barn will be heightened this year, a move that comes amid renewed concern about doping and horse safety in the sport. All visitors, including veterinarians, who want to spend time with horses scheduled to run in this year's Preakness will have to sign in at the barn off Winner Avenue, which will have just one entrance. Those new measures, adopted by the Maryland Racing Commission and Pimlico ownership, come in addition to surveillance measures and syringe-collection practices already in place for the second leg of the Triple Crown, scheduled to be run May 18 this year.

That the Orioles could be turned around and have a winning season in 2012 and then open the 2013 season with a victory possibly is reason to hope that other Maryland sporting traditions can be revived. Three cross country horse races that constitute what is informally known as Maryland's Triple Crown of steeplechase racing get their start this weekend and next in Harford County with the decades old traditions surrounding the Elkridge-Harford Point to Point and the My Lady's Manor races, to be followed by the Hunt Cup a few miles to the west in Baltimore County.