Ocean Downs

The Maryland Racing Commission approved yesterday a request by Bally's Maryland Inc., the new owner of Ocean Downs, to operate a 40-day harness meet from July 3 to Sept. 7.The track near Ocean City will race at 7: 30 p.m. Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with three exceptions. Those three: Opening week will be Thursday through Sunday, the track will race on Labor Day, and the final week will be Friday through Sunday.The racing commission also granted the owners permission to simulcast races the rest of the year.

A Senate committee moved last night toward expanding Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s slots proposal to include a racetrack near Ocean City and a third nontrack location, while cutting the share of revenues for the owners of slots facilities. As part of the legislation, the committee proposed adding $98 million in aid to local schools called for in the Thornton plan. The full amount would be phased in over five years, but the first half of the cost would be covered next year in $52 million in slot machine license fees to be charged to the track owners by October.

Like many horse racing tracks across the country, the Ocean Downs harness track on the Eastern Shore is hemorrhaging money. It lost an average of $2 million annually for the past five years. Ocean Downs' owner, William Rickman, wants the state's help. He is pushing a bill, scheduled for consideration Wednesday by a Senate committee, that would allow the state's two harness tracks to keep using a share of the purse money generated from Maryland's casinos to support daily racing operations.

BERLIN -- A fast-moving fire aided by strong winds destroyed a barn and killed one horse at the Bally's Ocean Downs raceway yesterday, officials said. A security guard at the raceway saw the smoke and flames and alerted fire officials about 5:20 p.m. Almost immediately, trainers and other personnel moved to save the seven horses in Barn F, the most southern in a cluster of about a dozen barns on the grounds in Worcester County. Six horses were led out safely. One fought to stay; the horse's body was found later in the charred rubble.

Maryland Live Casino will open Thursday at 8 a.m. and, according to officials, "never close again. " The Hanover facility, located adjacent to the Arundel Mills Mall, is the only one of the state's three casinos that requested full-time operation from the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Commission. The passing of Question 7 during the November election made it legal for casinos in the state to operate 24 hours a day. Maryland Live had previous closed at 2 a.m. on weeknights and 4 a.m. on weekends.

The wealthy Montgomery County owner of a Delaware thoroughbred track and slot-machine emporium has reached a tentative deal to buy a harness track near Ocean City, offering him the beachhead in Maryland's racing industry that he has long sought. William Rickman Jr., who also is vying for rights to build a horse track in Western Maryland, has an agreement to purchase Bally's at Ocean Downs, Dennis Dowd, presidentof the Worcester County racing facility, said yesterday. The proposed purchase - for an undisclosed price - faces a number of hurdles, not the least of which is the possibility that owners of Maryland's other horse tracks could match Rickman's offer and buy the financially struggling Eastern Shore venue.

BERLIN - If there's a cloud of uncertainty hanging over this 55-year-old harness racing track, you couldn't tell it watching Corey Furey and her kids whooping it up along the rail as eight standardbred trotters and their drivers thundered past the grandstand. Ten-year-old Alanna Furey has turned into a surefire handicapper. She bet $2 on the No. 3 horse because that's her soccer number. Her winnings: $2.40 and a chance to try again on the next race. This is the third year in a row that the family, which vacations in nearby Ocean City, has traded a night on the boardwalk, miniature golf and other resort attractions for an evening of racing at Ocean Downs.

Owner William Rickman Jr. is furiously working to get his Ocean Downs harness racing track put back into the General Assembly's slots legislation, meeting with lawmakers and people living near the track in his quest to secure expanded gambling for the Eastern Shore facility. The effort -- which included a reception this week at the track for chamber of commerce members from nearby Berlin and Ocean Pines -- aims to convince legislators and Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. that Worcester County residents back the idea of allowing slots at the track.

Baltimore Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos is bidding to buy a bankrupt horse-racing track in Prince George's County and resurrecting a push to allow slot machines there. Angelos' proposal came as Maryland's second slots casino opened Tuesday at the Ocean Downs racetrack on the Eastern Shore. Gov. Martin O'Malley, state leaders and Worcester County officials attended the grand opening of the $45 million casino, the latest expansion of Maryland gambling that took many years and rancorous debate to become a reality.

Clarification: In a sports article in Thursday's editions of The Sun about the state's harness racing industry, Beth Trotto was identified as a Rosecroft Raceway board member. She is a member of the board of the Cloverleaf Standardbred Owners' Association, whose members are stockholders of Cloverleaf Enterprises Inc. That entity, which owns and operates the track, has a separate board. After years of waiting for slot machines to come to the rescue, the state's harness racing industry fears that the slots measure making its way through the General Assembly could be a death knell instead.