Race Day

Jade Fertich day-tripped down to Baltimore yesterday not because he was worried about the end of Pimlico; he feared the end of the world. "Lots of sin coming in," the Mechanicsburg, Pa., resident advised, surveying the beer-burdened Preakness Day crowd entering the race course. "Drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Despite sunny skies, the start of the day did have a certain cataclysmic feel. Medics pocketed fistfuls of surgical gloves. A policeman stood on a median with his hands in his pockets, as if he had already realized the futility of directing traffic.

The pedal-powered aquatic racer known as It Cain't - just jumble the letters in "Titanic" - looked the part as it launched at Baltimore harbor yesterday morning. Competing in the seventh annual Kinetic Sculpture Race, its smokestacks had been toppled by the morning downpour and its rain-soaked foamboard exterior hung by threads. When the amphibious craft rolled into the harbor and immediately started to sink, a la The Movie, a clutch of race fans confidently predicted a cinematic end. Insiders knew better.

Night out with the stars If you'd rather look at the stars from a less urban environment, the Harford Astronomical Society is having an open house from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday. The group will be looking at the night sky and will have extra scopes, binoculars and uber-smart astronomy types on hand. Why would one want to gaze at the same stars more than once? "The same reason that you go to an art gallery and look at the same painting over and over again," said the society's president, Larry Armstrong.

GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - Bobby Frankel, the Hall of Fame trainer, has endured some gut-wrenching Breeders' Cups. Entering the 21st renewal yesterday at Lone Star Park near Dallas, he was 2-for-57 in what Americans call the world thoroughbred championships. He trained the beaten favorite the past three years in the Breeders' Cup Classic, the event's climactic race. Things weren't looking any better yesterday. Frankel lost with his first five horses. "I thought, `Another Breeders' Cup. I hate this day,'" Frankel said.

A 5-kilometer race to raise money to provide immediate help to crime victims in Anne Arundel County will take place Nov. 7, starting in Severna Park. This will be the seventh year of the Victims' Fund Run, sponsored by the community organization Take Back Our Streets and the county state's attorney's office. Some 300 participants are expected. Registration opens at 7 a.m. on race day, and the race starts at 8:15 a.m. at the Park Plaza Shopping Center parking lot on Ritchie Highway near Robinson Road.

Baseball has Opening Day. Steeplechasing has My Lady's Manor, and yesterday the annual rite of spring again brought elaborate picnics and thundering horses to the rolling green hills of Harford County. The first of these races was held in 1902, and not so many years ago it was a small affair. A few hundred people would show up in tweeds and waxed cotton jackets to watch horses hurdle timbered fences across a three-mile course. They might make a few gentlemanly wagers between sips of bourbon or bites of chicken, but no one worried about beating the traffic out of the parking lot. The Hunt Cup, held later in the spring, "was always the big cocktail party" of Maryland steeplechasing, said Pedie Killebrew, who has attended the My Lady's Manor races for more than 30 years with friends and family.

NBC Sports' national broadcast of the Preakness tomorrow afternoon will last but an hour and a half. For producer David Michaels, though, it's guaranteed to be an ulcer-inducing 90 minutes of his television life. "It's a 90-minute show around the two-minute race," Michaels said of the telecast, which begins at 5 p.m. for the 6:09 post. "Sometimes, it's like driving down a hill with no brakes in a school bus -- it can be scary. We just do the best we can to get out the information in an entertaining way."

ANNE ARUNDEL County Executive Janet S. Owens will suffer a big blow with the forced departure of Maryland's second-biggest annual thoroughbred racing event. Ms. Owens has wisely used the Maryland Million as an economic development tool for the last two years. She has invited corporate executives, wined and dined them and bent their ears about doing business in her county. Nobody calls her anti-business any more. It's too bad Arundel's executive won't get to schmooze this year. The Maryland Jockey Club has to move the Maryland Million to Pimlico because large panels of tempered glass mysteriously have cracked in Laurel Park's grandstand.

Fort Meade's seventh annual MeadeFest will take place Friday through July 4 in celebration of Independence Day. The six-day festival will begin with performances of "Letters from the Front - WWII" at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Army Air Force Exchange Service movie theater, 4321 Llewellyn Ave., Fort Meade. The two-person play, which tours military installations across the country, features letters by service members who served in World War II. Admission is $5 at the door or $3 in advance.