Race Fans

The piped-in classical music and the banks of TVs showing horse races seemed an odd combination at Laurel Park. But that, racing fans, signals the beginning of the new year at Maryland thoroughbred tracks.The Maryland Jockey Club has completed additional renovations in its effort to upgrade its two racetracks, Pimlico and Laurel Park. Yesterday, track officials welcomed guests in Tycoons, formerly the Silks Cafi, now a lush cigar and brandy room on the first floor of the clubhouse.Tycoons opens tomorrow, the first day of the new year, along with three other betting areas in the clubhouse: two simulcast theaters called Clocker's Corner and Sunny Jim's, and a high-rollers' room as yet unnamed, but which is designed for bettors who will push at least $3,000 through the windows.

The Maryland study commission to aid the horse-racing industry began its second round of hearings yesterday by hanging out a laundry list of racing's problems.The commission will address the list in subsequent meetings before submitting a package of legislative recommendations for helping the thoroughbred and standardbred industries keep pace with tracks in neighboring states that offer slot machines. The commission's next meeting is Dec. 18.Convening at the Lowe House Office Building in Annapolis, the commission set the tone with its first witness: Bruce H. Garland, senior vice president of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Way back in 1977, Richard Petty had this to say about race fans: "They either come to see you win or they come to see you get beat."These days, most of them come to boo Jeff Gordon.It's a phenomenon, given Gordon seems almost perfect. At 27, he is handsome. He is polite. He is successful, gracious in victory and has never had any trouble with drugs or alcohol.Yet, as he stepped out of his brilliant, rainbow-colored Chevrolet in victory lane at Michigan International Speedway last Sunday, boos rained down on him.It was his eighth win of the season, his record-tying fourth straight.

Aboard pleasure boats, sailboats, Jet Skis and on shorelines, hillsides and picnic tables, thousands of spectators gathered yesterday for a glimpse of Baltimore's first major league powerboat race.They watched as boats roared by at speeds as high as 100 mph.Baltimore resident Lloyd Stern, 54, arrived at Fort Armistead Park at 6 a.m., first to catch some white perch and then to stake out a site to see the race, which began about 1 p.m. He found his spot atop a picnic table in the park and gazed out over the Patapsco River, just south of the Key Bridge.

Determined to win over Anne Arundel County residents in its third try to find an uncontested site for a $100 million speedway, the Middle River Racing Association held a tightly formatted community meeting last night, highlighted by displays, tables of food and speakers.Its pitch was that a speedway would be a boon to the county and not a loud, polluting, traffic-generating bad neighbor.About 400 residents and race fans turned out for the meeting in a Pasadena fire hall. By press time, opponents in the crowd had not yet been allowed time to ask their questions -- all to be funneled through a moderator -- and complained that the meeting was "too tightly controlled" and a "snow job."

Determined to win over Anne Arundel County residents in its third try to find an uncontested site for a $100 million speedway, the Middle River Racing Association held a tightly formatted community meeting last night, highlighted by displays, tables of food and speakers.Its pitch was that a speedway would be a boon to the county and not a loud, polluting, traffic-generating bad neighbor.Some 400 residents and race fans turned out for the meeting in a Pasadena fire hall. By press time, opponents in the crowd had not yet been allowed time to ask their questions -- all to be funneled through a moderator -- and complained that the meeting was "too tightly controlled" and a "snow job."

After facing the wrath of hundreds of angry residents at community meetings in Baltimore County and southern Anne Arundel County, racetrack supporters now hoping to put a proposed speedway in Pasadena tried a new approach yesterday: They threw a party.With a markedly different tone than last month's racetrack protest in southern Anne Arundel, 200 auto racing fans from the Baltimore region showed up in good spirits yesterday afternoon at Cactus Cantina, a country and western bar near the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, to look at a race car, win raffle prizes and get organized.

Auto racing fans from outside Anne Arundel County crowded into a public meeting last night on a 54,800-seat speedway proposed for the west county.Leaders of the Russett Homeowners Association, which sponsored the meeting at Resurrection Roman Catholic Church, on Brock Bridge Road, said they were outraged that the developers brought scores of out-of-town boosters to a neighborhood meeting.The developer denied the charge.More than 650 people squeezed into the church, and traffic extended for more than a half-mile on Brock Bridge Road leading to the church.

Region doesn't need fifth NASCAR trackYour Aug. 18 editorial's description of the legend of stock car racing's origins is a little blurred regarding Prohibition's influence on the activity of moonshine running. Prohibition ended many years before the heyday of "shine runners" in the late 1930s and through the 1940s.NASCAR's formula for success has always been based on racing the cars that race fans own and drive. That product recognition and loyalty to a great extent fueled the popularity of the ''muscle cars'' of the 1960s and 1970s, and carries over today to the sponsor's products advertised on the hoods and sides of NASCAR's race cars and trucks.

When Ralph Cox, 7, drifts off to sleep at night in his Northeast Baltimore bedroom, his head rests on a NASCAR pillow, street lights filter through his NASCAR driver window curtains, a NASCAR bedspread keeps him warm.NASCAR mania also has hit Wally and Delores Wheeler, who meet with dozens of other fans on Sundays to cheer televised races at Rock-A-Billy's bar in Middle River -- not far from the site of a proposed $100 million motor sports speedway complex.The honor student from Armistead Gardens and the retired couple are part of the swarm of fans that has made auto racing the fastest growing spectator sport in America and changed the face of the sport.