Maryland Horse Racing

Keep costs low. Take full advantage of innovations in telephone and Internet betting. Make your racetrack welcoming and pack it with the latest in "virtual reality" games, batting cages and other amusements. Most important: Think outside the box.That is William M. Rickman's prescription for the ailing Maryland horse racing industry, one he hopes to fill in the form of a new two-breed track to be built in Western Maryland.At the encouragement of Maryland House Speaker and Western Maryland Democrat Casper R. Taylor Jr., Rickman has begun circulating a brief written description of his plans for the track and scouting for a site in Allegany County.

A state study commission agreed yesterday to recommend that legislators continue helping the Maryland horse racing industry through trying, competitive times. But the commission did not reveal how much assistance it would recommend.That will be decided during private deliberations among commissioners in the next two or three weeks, said Stuart S. Janney III, who heads the commission on the horse racing industry.Based on recommendations of the commission last year, the General Assembly passed and Gov. Parris N. Glendening signed a subsidy package that included $8 million for thoroughbred and standardbred purses and $1.5 million for marketing.

When he presents the winner's trophy at tomorrow's Preakness, Parris N. Glendening will be serving not only as governor but as unofficial chairman of Maryland horse racing's board of directors.The industry accords governors such status -- and moments of televised glory -- in exchange for good will and occasional financial bailouts. Governors may be racing fans, but they're also the industry's No. 1 regulator.Maryland's chief executives have played this role happily because the voters have wanted them to -- not just to monitor gambling but to protect a year-round business that produces jobs and millions of dollars.

Social calendarOct. 25: The St. Joseph Medical Center Auxiliary's October Party and Fashion Show. Marriott's Hunt Valley Inn. $40. 3 p.m. Cocktails, dinner, auction and the show. Call 410-654-0000.Nov. 1: First annual FANS Follies, a musical revue to benefit the Baltimore School for the Arts Scholarship Fund. Baltimore School for the Arts, 712 Cathedral St. 1 p.m. performance, 2 p.m. dessert reception. Adults $20, children under 12 $5. Call 410-225-2020.Around townAccording to Mary Ann Cricchio, co-owner of Da Mimmo's in Little Italy, it didn't take long for that "drop dead" handsome actor Richard Gere to discover her eatery.

The battle over the future of Maryland horse racing is being waged in an unlikely place -- a strip shopping center on U.S. 11 outside Hagerstown.It is there that the huge Bally casino-hotel company wants to topple the status quo in state racing with its proposal to open an off-track betting operation that would directly compete with Maryland's powerful thoroughbred industry.While several of the nation's biggest casino companies have hired lobbyists to patrol the State House, Bally is the first to make a multimillion-dollar investment in a state gambling enterprise, having already purchased an Eastern Shore harness track and acquired an option on another near Washington.

Beginning today, thousands and thousands of dollars in simulcast revenue will be forfeited by the Maryland horse racing industry.All parties involved in a disagreement over the division of that revenue will lose. If the schism lasts indefinitely, thoroughbred and harness racing in the state could be battling for survival.But after two years of negotiations, their positions have hardened and no one seems willing to budge.When the Maryland Racing Commission meets today at Pimlico Race Course, it will cast a jaundiced eye at the situation.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- An uncharitable person might say it's only a case of the proverbial blind pig stumbling at last upon an acorn, but there's not much doubt that in standing strong against the big-time gambling interests, Governor Glendening has finally come down on the winning side of a major issue.This has done him some good already, and may do him some more. In the short run, it helped to give him a much-needed boost in the polls, for most Marylanders don't like the prospect of their state becoming another Nevada.

The first concrete indication of the negative effects slot-machine gambling in Delaware will have on Maryland horse racing came yesterday.Today's reopening of Rosecroft Raceway in Prince George's County was marred considerably when only 48 horses were entered for the harness track's first Saturday program of the year."

HAVRE DE GRACE -- So the governor of Maryland and the mayor of Baltimore have a deal, the paper says. These two esteemed public servants have agreed to work together to bring slot machines back to the state.The public, remembering the last adventure with these devices and the colorful people who accompanied them, isn't high on that idea. But what does the public know? It's the paternal responsibility of government to give the public what it needs, rather than it wants. This is called governing in the public interest.

If the Kentucky Derby is the most exciting two minutes in sports, the most exciting minute and eight seconds might be today's Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash at Laurel Park.Seven electrifying speedballs -- some with dazzling early foot, others with heart-thumping late speed -- clash in the six-furlong, $300,000, Grade II race that could serve as a prep for the $1 million Breeders' Cup Sprint this fall at Woodbine.The seven-horse De Francis field is so stacked that the country's champion sprinter, Not Surprising, is fifth in the morning line at 6-1. Created in memory of Frank J. De Francis, who was credited with reviving Maryland horse racing in the 1980s, the race is the nation's richest sprint of the summer.

As a new 44-cent commemorative envelope honoring fabled thoroughbred champion Seabiscuit is being released in California on Monday, one of Maryland's revered racing ambassadors will get an accolade too. Former Vice President Walter Mondale and his wife, Joan, have a letter of congratulation ready for Howard "Gelo" Hall, who has been a fixture at Pimlico and other tracks for nearly 70 years. The Mondales are Seabiscuit fans, and Joan Mondale sits on the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee.

After winning a conference championship, does an NFL owner spend a lot of time pondering whether to go to the Super Bowl? Does the manager of a pennant winning baseball team say, "I'll think about the World Series thing and get back to you in a few days?" Alas, when it rains it pours on Maryland horse racing. An industry that has endured ruinous competition from other forms of legalized gambling over the past two decades, declining attendance, a gradual loss of racing dates, the slots brouhaha, and most recently, bankruptcy and the possibility of state takeover through eminent domain, found itself all wet again over the weekend.

Attorneys for Maryland are asking a federal judge to affirm the state's claim to the Preakness Stakes amid concern in Annapolis that current bankruptcy proceedings could invalidate a law designed to keep the historic horse race in Baltimore. In filings Friday, lawyers for the state asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware to order the bankrupt Magna Entertainment Corp. - which is trying to sell its Maryland horse racing assets, including the Preakness - to comply with a Maryland law giving the state the right to match any accepted bid to buy the second leg of the Triple Crown.

How many different ways can Maryland's slots proposal be messed up? Perhaps this was all predictable from the start. Has there ever been a state that has acted so ambivalently over slots? That has had such a long-running, love-hate, passive-aggressive relationship with the darn things? That has flirted with them for years and years but, now that they're finally on our doorstep, can't quite bring itself to seal the deal with a satisfying, yes I said yes I will Yes ending? More like, maybe I said maybe I will Maybe, as it's turned out, even though voters supposedly settled the matter back in November when they amended the Constitution to let 15,000 of the machines into the state.

Preakness Day might be Maryland horse racing's day in the national spotlight and certainly does the most good for the pocketbook of the state's thoroughbred industry. But Maryland Million Day, being run for the 23rd time Saturday, might do the most good for Maryland's racing pride. The card of 12 races at Laurel Park (12:15 p.m. start) is restricted to horses sired in Maryland, and, as more than one horseman put it, unlike the Preakness, it makes players out of local breeders and trainers rather than relegating them to spectators.

Maryland's pro-slots forces are planning an eight-month campaign for a referendum on expanded gambling that they say would fix the state's budget problems and save horse racing. But those who stand to benefit most - the state's racetrack owners - are balking at the effort and saying that they might not participate in the push for the ballot measure. Scott Borgemenke, executive vice president for racing at Magna Entertainment Corp., the Canadian company that owns the Laurel and Pimlico tracks, said yesterday that the company has not decided whether to contribute to the pro-slots campaign being led by former Maryland Budget Secretary Frederick W. Puddester.

Maryland horse racing produces its share of depressing headlines as the political stalemate over slots continues, the future of the Preakness Stakes is debated, and more of the state's breeders and horsemen contemplate leaving. But there is a positive development amid the negativity, and it is on display today at Pimlico Race Course: The Preakness is booming like never before. The Maryland Jockey Club, which oversees the state's racing franchise, might struggle the rest of the year, but it excels on the third Saturday in May. "They do a hell of a job here.

Maryland horse racing fans could be in for quite a treat Feb. 19, with a possible showdown between Sweetnorthern- saint, the betting favorite in the Kentucky Derby and second-place finisher in the Preakness last spring, and Ah Day, the winner of six stakes races last year and Maryland's Horse of the Year. Both are nominated to the $300,000 Grade II General George Breeders' Cup Handicap. "We're leaning toward the General George," said Sweetnorthernsaint trainer Mike Trombetta, who also nominated the horse to the John B. Campbell Handicap on Feb. 17 Trombetta acknowledged that it would be fun for Maryland fans to see The Saint and Ah Day go head-to-head in the seven-furlong clash.

When NBC sportscaster Bob Costas stood next to Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. at last year's Preakness Stakes trophy presentation, he asked the question that was echoing from the infield to the grandstand: Would that Preakness be Maryland's last? Slot machine gambling - long pitched as the savior of the state's beleaguered horse racing industry - had failed in the legislature for the third year in a row, and Pimlico's majority owner, Magna Entertainment Corp., was sounding ominous notes about the future.

Lexington, Ky. -- Heading the list of questions facing the Maryland horse racing industry is the doomsday one: Could the equine herpes outbreak linger long enough to affect Pimlico Race Course's spring meeting, which includes the Preakness? Then there are the other questions. How long will the horses at Pimlico be under quarantine? How many might die? How adversely will the current Laurel Park meeting be affected? Veterinarians and racing officials in Kentucky, America's premier racing state, don't claim to have answers to all questions, especially the last one. But having dealt with two herpes outbreaks in the past nine months, including one still active at Turfway Park in Florence, they say there's no reason to panic as long as veterinarians and those who work with the horses are taking proper precautions.