Racing Fans

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.

Construction magnate and self-described "gearhead" Dale Dillon has built offices for high-speed racing teams, laid tracks for IndyCar contests in two cities and, despite having only one leg, raced open-wheeled cars competitively around the country. Now, the Indianapolis-based contractor is poised to become the face of Baltimore's Grand Prix race. He confronts the daunting task of crafting a new image for the racing festival — which drove the previous organizers to financial collapse — and pulling together the massive event in little more than six months.

CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. -- Racing fans will have an opportunity to watch and wager on the entire seven-race, $10 million Breeders' Cup this afternoon as part of a 21-race doubleheader at Charles Town.Post time for the first Breeders' Cup race will be 12:15 p.m.Wagers on the national Pick-7 will be accepted until 12:10 p.m. this afternoon, so patrons are advised to make their wagers early. Admission gates will open at 10:30 a.m., and mutuel windows are scheduled to open at 11:15 a.m.Immediately following the Breeders' Cup races, Charles Town will present simulcasts of the Iroquois and Cardinal stakes, also from Churchill Downs, followed by a live 12-race card.

Inez Alice Chappell, a former Pennsylvania Avenue manicurist and thoroughbred racing fan, died Nov. 2 of heart failure at Seasons Hospice at Northwest Hospital Center. The Northwest Baltimore resident was 86. The daughter of an a-rab and a homemaker, Miss Chappell was born and raised in West Baltimore and Harlem Park. She was a 1943 graduate of the old Frederick Douglass High School and Cortez Peters Business School. For more than two decades, Miss Chappell worked as a manicurist at Pennsylvania Avenue barbershops.

If you're a fan of Maryland horseracing, you'll want to be at the Maryland Million at Laurel Park on Saturday. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the racing event, which is restricted to the offspring of Maryland stallions. Racing fans will see Maryland horses compete in 12 races, with purses totaling nearly $1.5 million. In addition to watching the races, visitors can attend an autograph-signing by Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, watch musical performances by the Marine Corps Marching Band and see the Maryland Million Horse Fair.

CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. -- Racing fans can watch and wager on the 119th running of the Kentucky Derby tomorrow, when the Charles Town Races presents the race as part of a full-card simulcast-live racing tripleheader.Wagers on the Kentucky Derby will be commingled with those placed at Churchill Downs and numerous other simulcast outlets.Gates for Charles Town's Churchill Downs Derby Day simulcast open at 10:30 a.m., and the first 1,000 fans paying full regular admission will receive a souvenir Kentucky Derby glass.

The wrecking ball began swinging its way two weeks ago through the old wooden, steel and glass grandstand at Bowie Race Course, where for 71 drama-filled years horseplayers cheered winners and mourned losers. Perfect Park, ironically, won the last race before 12,012 racing fans at the Prince George's County race track, which closed on July 13, 1985. While departing fans were serenaded over the public address system by a recording of Guy Lombardo's "Thanks for The Memories," the infield board flashed its final message: "Bowie: 1914-1985.

There aren't many sure things in horse racing, but state officials say that Saturday's Preakness Stakes - and the surrounding hoopla - are a safe bet to pump $60 million into Baltimore's economy. The city's major hotels say they have to turn away thousands of potential guests, and spending on food, drinks and transportation is solid. In some cases, the annual windfall represents a company's biggest day of the year. Even with Pimlico Race Course's aging facilities, the event is a dependable economic boost because the winner of the Kentucky Derby nearly always runs in the Preakness, giving racing fans hope of seeing the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978.

LAUREL -- The late Frank De Francis had a knack for knowing what turned racing fans on. Although he was a self-styled king of promotion, De Francis knew that no amount of promotion could top the legitimacy of a race among top-class horses.So when Safely Kept and Housebuster meet for the first time in today's second Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash at Laurel Race Course, the ideals of De Francis, who died nearly two years ago, will be uppermost in the mind of his son, Joe De Francis."The thing my dad never forgot," said De Francis, who has assumed the legacy of his father as controlling owner and president of Laurel and Pimlico race courses, "was that he was selling horse racing.

Maryland is fortunate to be a state with a long history rich in traditions - including the horse racing industry, which dates back to the Colonial era. The Maryland Jockey Club is almost 250 years old. In 1771, George Washington wrote that he came to Annapolis to watch and bet on the Maryland horse races. Saturday, the Preakness Stakes will be run for the 134th time. As other professional sports have evolved and prospered in our state, we have slowly started to lose this tradition upon which much of our agricultural heritage is founded.

One can only hope that crow tastes like chicken, because after the success of the Baltimore Grand Prix, there are a number of people dining on it this week. That may even include, gentle reader, the members of this newspaper's editorial board who, along with many letter writers, publicly pouted about the inconveniences and controversies imposed by the three-day event. "It had better be worth it," was one of our snappier headlines. So let's take the inventory. The turnout of spectators was greater than promised - as high as 160,000 over Labor Day weekend, though the numbers are a little soft given the inexact accounting of tickets.

While Baltimore gets all gussied up for its IndyCar debut on Labor Day weekend, the people who have turned NASCAR into America's favorite motorsport want you to know that they love Charm City, too. That's why NASCAR driver Kenny Wallace was acting as an impromptu tour director on the Annapolitan II in the Inner Harbor on Tuesday morning, entertaining a boatload of racing fans with his North Carolina drawl and his admittedly limited knowledge of...

Selling racegoers on the Preakness Stakes has been a tricky balancing act in the past few years. The Maryland Jockey Club struck out in 2009 when it ended the bring-your-own-beer policy in the infield, driving away thousands of young people. It won many of them back last year with the suggestive "Get Your Preak On" campaign, but upset the more traditional fans of horse racing. This year, race organizers have embarked on a delicate strategy to appeal to the race's rowdy and refined fans alike — and it seems to have paid off, with organizers expecting the biggest crowd since 2007.

The Preakness it's not. No mobs of young people in the infield or fancily dressed women in colorful hats in the grandstand or even live horses running around Pimlico's dirt track. Still, hundreds of dedicated race fans showed up at the Northwest Baltimore track Saturday to watch and bet on simulcast broadcasts of horses running in Delaware, New Jersey and New York, as they waited for a horse with the unlikely name of Drosselmeyer to win the 142nd running of the Belmont Stakes, racing's third leg of the Triple Crown.

The 135th Preakness Stakes was a blur of perfect weather and outrageous hats, bow ties and tube tops, society types and drunken revelers, parking-space hustlers and soul-savers, and for nearly two minutes — almost beside the point — a horse race. More than 95,000 fans poured into Pimlico Racecourse for the event, won by Lookin At Lucky, whose victory means there will be no Triple Crown champion this year. Announced attendance was up by about 23 percent over last year.

The 135th Preakness Stakes was a blur of perfect weather and outrageous hats, bow ties and tube tops, society types and drunken revelers, parking-space hustlers and soul-savers, and for nearly two minutes — almost beside the point — a horse race. More than 95,000 fans poured into Pimlico Racecourse for the event, won by Lookin At Lucky, whose victory means there will be no Triple Crown champion this year. Attendance was up by about 23 percent. A new alcohol policy — rejiggered for the second year in a row —brought some fans back but also led to gripes about long beer lines.

Before Joe Fonte heads to the racetrack tomorrow, he'll see what they're saying about his horse in cyberspace.Fonte co-owns a horse, "Twice As Special," which will run at Pimlico Friday afternoon. He will arrive at the racetrack with encouraging words for his partners, having found the quickest, most up-to-date predictions about their horse on the World World Web."There are 300 to 400 sites I can probably link to," said Fonte, a 43-year-old computer specialist at Johns Hopkins University's applied physics laboratory.

The images will return today like snapshots from a funeral: Barbaro breaking through the gate prematurely. Barbaro breaking down in the first furlong. Crestfallen jockey Edgar Prado in tears. Barbaro being hauled away from Pimlico Race Course in an ambulance as night closed in. One more time, the nation's racing fans - along with many who are not - will mourn the loss of a champion. One more time, they will remember the moment, the ordeal and the bitter end. "What I loved was seeing Michael Matz run over and give the jockey a hug," Aynsley Smith, a sport psychologist for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

As he watched the Preakness on Saturday, Joe Kelly summoned the racing spirits that move on both four legs and two. Whirlaway, Citation and Secretariat. Arcaro, Hartack and Shoemaker. Horses with hurricane strength. Riders who harnessed their power. At 91, Kelly has seen them all at Pimlico Race Course. "The ghosts are everywhere," he said. One of them, he fears, might soon be the track itself. The fate of both Pimlico and Laurel Park is in question because their owner, Magna Entertainment Corp.