Pimlico

The top local entrant for Friday's 89th running of the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes at Pimlico took one wrong step on Thursday and had to be scratched. Walkwithapurpose, a Maryland-bred owned by Sagamore Farm in Glyndon, was expected to be one of the top contenders in the $500,000 Grade II race run at a mile and one-eighth for 3-year-old-fillies. Thursday afternoon, however, the Sagamore Farm filly had to drop out of the race after bruising her foot earlier in the day during her final gallop on the track at Pimlico in preparation for Friday's race.

Stuart Janney III, the co-owner of even-money Preakness favorite Orb, arrived at Pimlico Race Course on Thursday morning to watch the colt once again have an easy trip around the track and then go through his morning routine. Janney, the chairman of the Bessemer Trust, traveled earlier in the week and came back to Baltimore from New York, where the company is headquartered, last night. He said he's pleased with how Orb has progressed after winning the Kentucky Derby, and has warm memories of spending mornings during Preakness week at the track 20 minutes from his Butler home.

Harford County has had many big-time sports moments in its glorious history. Perhaps none were bigger, however, than the one that happened 30 years ago this week. That's when Harford County's own Deputed Testamony won the 1983 Preakness, bringing home the second of the three jewels of the Triple Crown of thoroughbred horse racing contested each year. The Triple Crown, for horse racing novices, is the Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May, the Preakness down the road at Pimlico in Baltimore on the third Saturday in May and the Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y., on Long Island three Saturdays later.

In a pair of low-slung green stables manned by security guards and watched by 24-hour surveillance cameras, a pack of brawny young horses will be monitored, poked and assessed down to the blood in their veins. The horses set to race in the 138th Preakness are to be kept under a microscope from their arrival at Pimlico Race Course until they burst from their starting gates Saturday — not only to avoid injury but also scandal. "It's become more sophisticated," said David Zipf, 72, the Maryland Racing Commission's longtime chief veterinarian for thoroughbred racing.

Much like the nickname “Shug,” Claude R. McGaughey III's plans after college were a mystery to him. McGaughey, who trains Kentucky Derby winner and Preakness favorite Orb, was a student at the University of Mississippi's business school as the Vietnam War was going on and wasn't enjoying it - he was "piddling around," as he called it. Drawing a high draft number in the 1969 draft, McGaughey decided to leave school. The only way his parents would allow him to, though, was if he got a job. McGaughey reached out to a friend who owned several horses at Keeneland in Lexington for work.

D. Wayne Lukas, the Hall of Fame trainer, has started 37 horses in the Preakness. He expects to have three more - Will Take Charge, Oxbow and Titletown Five - go to the post Saturday for the 138th running of the middle jewel of the Triple Crown. Does Lukas like Pimlico? Indeed he does. "I do like it here. We've only missed two, maybe only one in the last 33 years," Lukas said as he waited to accompany one of his horses to the track Wednesday morning. Standing just outside the stakes barn, Lukas was outfitted in his usual jeans, chaps, boots and spurs and a 10-gallon hat. Waiting patiently nearby was his stable pony Diamond, a reminder that while Lukas may have revolutionized the sport of horse racing with some of his methods, he's still a throwback when it comes to others.

A few low, indecipherable noises escaped from the table where Shug McGaughey, trainer of even-money Preakness favorite Orb, sat during the post-position draw Wednesday. The horse had drawn the dreaded No. 1 gate, meaning eight horses will be closing him in as they race toward the shortest path to the first turn. McGaughey, though, was not among those who thought this meant anything significant. “Some people groaned,” he said. “I didn't groan.” McGaughey acknowledged a preference to start on the outside of the field - where both the jockey and horse can watch the field open up - but said he thought drawing the rail simply didn't matter in a nine-horse field running over a mile and three-sixteenths.

For a sudden media phenomenon, Orb was remarkably relaxed on the morning of his first full day at Pimlico Tuesday as he gets ready to tackle the second jewel of racing's Triple Crown in Saturday's 138 th running of the Preakness Stakes. “He's got plenty of energy,” Shug McGaughey, Orb's trainer, told a small group of reporters and photographers outside the stakes barn at Pimlico, shortly after Orb had walked in the shed row and received his morning bath. “He's settled in well.” The bay muscular colt's chief attention Tuesday appeared to be focused on the long grassy area that sits just across the path from his stall and runs along the perimeter fence.

Kentucky Derby winner Orb continues getting accustomed to his temporary Maryland home, which involves mostly eating the grass on a small plot of land outside his stall at Pimlico Race Course. He did that for another 40 minutes -- as per a routine trainer Shug McGaughey keeps with almost all of his horses -- after walking the shed row Tuesday morning. The Malibu Moon colt was due a break after a fast breeze Monday morning at Belmont Park before shipping down I-95 into the home state of his co-owner, Butler resident Stuart Janney III. Orb does not appear bothered by anything at this point.

Company's coming to Pimlico Race Course . For the throngs expected at Saturday's Preakness, the hospitality team at Pimlico Race Course is bringing in 7,000 pounds of crab meat and 3,000 pounds of aged tenderloin. Did someone remember to get ice? Yes: 30,000 bags of frozen water are already in place. Those were just a few of the items on the Preakness list of Tommy Inzer, director of hospitality for the Maryland Jockey Club, which has been hosting the Preakness since 1873.