Race

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.

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All along, they had been so relaxed. So when it came time for Team O'Neill's horse to make his charge -- a historic one -- the colt moved forward almost nonchalantly. I'll Have Another glided past Bodemeister to win the 137th running of the Preakness Stakes on Saturday at Pimlico Race Course, setting up a chance at the first Triple Crown since 1978. The California-based horse is the 12th to win the first two legs of the Triple Crown since Affirmed edged Alydar in all three races.

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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.

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.

NBC Sports says it had 170 employees in Baltimore this week to cover the Preakness, and from the looks of the TV package it presented, all of them earned their keep. NBC's network coverage started at 4:30 p.m., and it hardly ever sagged for more than a minute or two right up until the start of the race some two hours later. And that's no mean feat given that the horse racing world is essentially on hold until the start of the race on the day of a Triple Crown event. What I am saying is that once you show the infield crowd dancing to Maroon 5, overhead shots of the Inner Harbor and Pimlico, ground level shots of the grandstand, women in hats, tables full of crab cakes, Black-eyed Susans all in a row, and the horses in their stalls, what do you do for the other hour and 50 minutes?

The $50,000 Basil Hall Stakes was intended to be Just Call Me Carl's first test on the turf track yesterday at Pimlico Race Course. Instead, it turned into his maiden effort in the mud, and the Strawberry Road horse passed the examination almost effortlessly. The horse who runs for charity was anything but charitable to three rivals, racing them into submission and proceeding to a 2 1/2 -length victory over Rudirudy on a track rated "good." Just Call Me Carl increased his lifetime earnings to $191,671 with his third stakes triumph.

Don't do it, Virginia! Our neighbor to the south is weighing legislation that would allow lenders there to make car-title loans with triple-digit interest rates to consumers in Maryland and other states. This only four months after Virginia lenders were banned from making such loans out of state. Car-title loans, which allow you to borrow against the value of your vehicle, are such bad deals that more than half of the states, including Maryland, basically don't allow them.

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.

Do I want to know whether the mob was black or white ("Baltimore and bigotry," May 18)? You're damn right I do. Race is not irrelevant. City officials have been withholding vital information from the public for years. The inner harbor is not the safe place it use to be. Condemn the crime, not the delegate. R.J. Stryjewski

As part of ESPN's coverage of the NCAA tournament's quarterfinal round this past weekend, Paul Carcaterra was the sideline reporter for all four contests. The former Syracuse All-American midfielder, who can be followed on Twitter via @paulcarcaterra, provided his thoughts on the most stunning result in the quarterfinals, the hottest team in the Final Four and the race for the Tewaaraton Award. Which was more exciting: the first round or the quarterfinal round? I thought both rounds wre entertaining and provided fans with different styles in lacrosse.

The ongoing debate over youth crime in downtown Baltimore has sparked a war of words over race — overshadowing a debate over the police response to disturbances and objections from city politicians who say the issue is vastly overblown. Since a state delegate introduced the term "black youth mobs" in reference to hundreds of teenagers mobbing downtown on St. Patrick's Day, discussions from living rooms to online forums have been dominated by race. That has left little room for discussion of the real issues, all sides agree.

State Del. Pat McDonough's news release alleging that "black youth mobs terrorize" downtown Baltimore has certainly set off a firestorm of debate. But what about the nature of that discussion, particularly as it relates to race? Without an inclusive, candid and wide-ranging conversation about race, such discussions tend to inflame rather than enlighten. And instead of getting smarter as a community about our feelings on race, we can get more confused and polarized. One thing that has bothered me for several days is the way that various parts of the community tried to silence McDonough in the immediate wake of his Wednesday news release.

How sad that Del. Patrick McDonough chooses to use his bully pulpit to frighten tourists away from Baltimore City ("Baltimore and bigotry," May 18) - and how said that the media lets him get away with it by using race-baiting headlines. Yes, a lot of teenagers came down to the harbor just like a hundreds of other people to enjoy the weather, and yes, the police need to be more prepared to handle the few troublemakers who show up. But those of us who live here and enjoy all of the wonderful things the city has to offer would appreciate it if those who want to destroy Baltimore would keep their negativity to themselves.

At first glance, Pimlico Race Course 's infield didn't look quite as trash-filled as Yolanda Wade is used to seeing it the Sunday morning after the Preakness, despite record crowds this year. It was an illusion. With more tents than in previous years, there was more room for the detritus of 121,300 fans to hide, turning the annual clean-up into a kind of warped treasure hunt. The tents "camouflaged the trash," said Wade, a fill-in supervisor for Pritchard Sports & Entertainment who works at Pimlico and the Laurel Park racetrack year-round.

First race Graham Motion's day got off to a good start when he saddled a winner in the first race. Technique, who went off at 7-1 and was ridden by Edgar Prado, won by at least two lengths. Technique paid $14 to win. Second race Katherine Sancuk's No Brakes rallied from next-to-last to win the $25,000 Deputed Testamony Starter Handicap, the first of nine stakes on Preakness Day. Xavier Perez rode the 6-year-old gelding — who finished fifth in the race last year and was claimed for $5,000 by his present connections in March — pulled ahead near the 16th marker and narrowly beat Money For Love to the finish.

It doesn't matter whether Bob Ehrlich's campaign was mismanaged or not. Gov. Martin O'Malley was re-elected because he is the best man for the job. Period. Matilda Weiner, Baltimore

Sam Grossman's fifth year as official bugler for the Preakness is one he'll never forget. Neither will his new fiancee, Valerie Moore, to whom he proposed between bugling duties for the fifth and the sixth races on Saturday. Even though the Long Island, N.Y., resident has been the bugler at his state's three racetracks — Belmont, Aqueduct and Saratoga — 250 days a year for the past 20 years, he had a big reason for popping the question the one day each year he musically introduces races at Pimlico.

As jockey Joe Bravo slid off Teeth of the Dog to talk to trainer Michael Matz after Saturday's Preakness, he was smiling. It might have seemed an odd expression for a jockey whose horse had just finished fifth. But Teeth of the Dog was the highest-finishing Maryland-trained horse in the race - and it had been a glorious race. Kentucky Derby winner I'll Have Another came from 31/2 lengths back down the stretch to forge ahead of the betting favorite, Bodemeister, by a neck at the finish.