Racing In Maryland

Colonial Downs, the Virginia track managed by the Maryland Jockey Club, has received approval from the Virginia Racing Commission to conduct the "Grand Slam of Grass," four turf races that will offer a $2 million bonus to a horse who can sweep the series. The track between Richmond and Williamsburg will run the first two races during its summer meet, June 24 through Aug. 16. The third race is to be determined and the fourth race will be the Breeders' Cup Turf. The two races at Colonial Downs, both for 3-year-olds, will be the inaugural, $500,000 Colonial Turf Cup on June 25 and the $750,000, Grade III Virginia Derby on July 16. The last two winners of the Virginia Derby, Silver Tree and Kitten's Joy, competed in last fall's Breeders' Cup. "We're pretty proud of the horses who've won and gone on to the Breeders' Cup from our race," said John Mooney, Colonial Downs' general manager.

Creating a unified front to show they could spend slot machine proceeds wisely, Maryland horse-racing industry leaders unveiled a plan yesterday that they said could revive the struggling sport if lawmakers authorize an expansion of gambling. The 15-page plan is less notable for what it contains than for who signed on to it, bringing together competing factions of the racing scene whose back-biting has contributed to the failure of slot machine legislation for the past two years. Signatories include James L. Gagliano, executive vice president of racing in Maryland for Magna Entertainment Corp.

When Magna Entertainment Corp., majority owner of the Maryland Jockey Club, announced earlier this month that it lost $50.3 million in the third quarter of this year, Jim McAlpine, Magna president and chief executive officer, said the company had begun a sweeping review, with the intention of dramatically cutting costs and possibly selling property. During a visit to Maryland last week, McAlpine said the review, conducted by an executive management committee, was "just good business - to periodically step back and ask: `Are we doing everything we should be doing?

IF LITTLE has changed in the two years since Magna Entertainment Corp. paid $117 million to own horse racing in Maryland, Frank Stronach said there's a reason. The racing magnate made $53 million in salary and commissions from Magna International Inc. last year. He is one of America's top breeders. He's not exactly twiddling his thumbs, waiting for Annapolis to decide. "I don't want to get involved in politics. We want to run a good ship. If we would have gotten a clear signal in Maryland as to what's ahead, we would move forward.

Racing returned yesterday to Laurel Park for its six-month fall-winter stand featuring the Maryland Million on Saturday. Things went well for one race. Then, with fire alarms throughout the track flashing and emitting high-pitched alerts, the track was evacuated and fire trucks arrived with their lights flashing. It turned out there was no fire. An alarm in the Carriage Room, a banquet hall, had somehow been mistakenly triggered. Patrons were allowed back in. Racing resumed. The second race started 12 minutes late, the third seven minutes late.

Though the General Assembly debate over slots was dominated by doom-and-gloom predictions about the future of horse racing in Maryland, Saturday's 128th running of the Preakness Stakes is hardly likely to be the last at Pimlico Race Course. With the Preakness tradition dating back more than a century and state legislation passed 18 years ago, any attempt to move the second leg of the Triple Crown out of Old Hilltop would face significant, if not insurmountable, hurdles, say track owners and others in the horse industry.

The story of thoroughbred horse racing in Maryland begins in Colonial America and hurtles through the decades with a force of star power that no state outside Kentucky can match. George Washington bet here. Man O' War learned to race here. Triple Crown champions such as Citation and Secretariat won here. Legends such as Native Dancer and Kelso are buried here. A new chapter in the tale is written every year with the running of the Preakness, the second jewel of the Triple Crown, set for Saturday at Pimlico Race Course.

IT WAS BEAUTIFUL at Pimlico on Thursday, the day after the great thinkers in Annapolis cast a cloud over thoroughbred horse racing in Maryland. The sun was shining, the track was fast and nobody much cared. With a crowd of 3,147 for the second day of the spring meet, you can headline this sport's obituary: Game called on account of indifference. On Wednesday, slot machines intended as salvation for racing (and schools) were voted down by a House of Delegates committee. In Delaware and West Virginia, where Marylanders go to spend their mad money, the racetrack people did celebratory cartwheels.

At post time, there was still a glimmer of hope. OK, maybe not a glimmer, more like a vague, desperate hope that Maryland horse racing's future might somehow be salvaged, maybe even secured. "I don't want to say we're on pins and needles, but this meet does start in limbo," Maryland Jockey Club CEO Lou Raffetto said yesterday. "We're all waiting. I don't like to think about the alternative because it scares me what that means to us," he said. Opening Day of Pimlico's spring meet was a weird one, because as it wore on, it drew closer to what everyone figured was a foregone conclusion: The state's slot machine bill that was going to be racing's salvation - not to mention education's and taxation's salvation - was dying, if not already DOA. Walking through the barns behind the grandstand at Pimlico yesterday, you'd wave to grooms and riders and say, casually: "How's it going?"

The horse industry is the fastest-growing agricultural sector in Harford County, local officials say, but stagnant racing purses threaten its continued viability in the state, some area farmers contend. Billy Boniface, co-owner of Bonita Farms in Darlington, said business has dropped because of problems with breeders' incentives, the percentage of money in a racing purse that goes back to the farm that bred the racehorse. Those incentives and the purses that owners receive if their horses win are larger in nearby states.