Racing Team

After five months of bone-jarring, teeth-rattling adventure at the earth's extremes, the sailors of the Volvo Ocean Race are on their way to Maryland, the Land of Pleasant Living. If only the wind holds out. The six yachts will leave Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, today for the 5,000-mile voyage north and arrive at the Inner Harbor around April 15. They will be on display as part of the Baltimore Waterfront Festival from April 27 until May 4, when they head to Annapolis for the three-day Maryland Maritime Heritage Festival.

Once a coach, always a coach, even after the coach becomes an owner. That said, meet Joe Gibbs, the former Washington Redskins coach who will be inducted into the National Football League Hall of Fame this July.And meet Joe Gibbs, the NFL Hall of Famer who now owns a growing motor-sports empire: a stock-car team on the Winston Cup circuit, two National Hot Rod Association drag-racing teams and two smaller stock-car teams, whose drivers are his two sons, Coy and J. D.Though he no longer has the title Coach in front of his name, there is little doubt that the role still belongs to him."

While Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas and swimmer Katie Ledecky proved to the world what a little girl power could do in London this summer, a group of women racecar drivers prepared to show the Grand Prix of Baltimore what they could do with a little horsepower. Emilee Tominovich of Clarksville and her TrueCar Racing teammates are the only all-female team to compete in six different racing series, including two featured in the city's stop along the Mazda Road to Indy. Mont Brownlee's 5-year-old daughter, Adella, smiled when she learned about the women drivers, as she fought a losing battle with her melting ice cream.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman thought about his rookie year in pro football and paused. Aikman is now co-owner of Hall of Fame Racing, a Nextel Cup team that debuts in the Daytona 500 tomorrow. He had just been asked how long he thinks it will take his team to be competitive. "I hope it isn't as difficult as my rookie season was," he said. "I was 0-11 as a starter, but yet, if it is, I don't think anyone is going to be prepared to throw in the towel."

Maybe no one can explain the importance of today's Ravens home game with the Pittsburgh Steelers better than Ravens safety Bennie Thompson.Take it away, Bennie"Yep, this is the statement game, this is the one," said Thompson, with that old Louisiana accent. "For the old guys that came here from Cleveland, we don't like Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh doesn't like us. Some of the new guys and rookies don't understand, but they will once they get out there. There is a very physical nature to this game."

A.J. Foyt, Indy car racing's all-time winningest driver (67) and championship record holder (7), is now 77. He's had open heart surgery, and in January went through an illness that nearly killed him. But here he is, alive, opinonated and planning to get his race team back among the top teams in the IndyCar Series. In a recent one-on-one interview Foyt talked about many things, among them why the 1977 Indy 500 win was special to him beyond making him the first driver to win the race four times, the recent announcement that he'll field a car for minority driver Chase Austin in the Indianapolis 500 next May and a recent staph infection following same-day surgeries to remove bone spurs from his artificial knee and repair a rotator cuff.

Bryn Mawr freshman Nyam Kagwima said she's been fortunate to have Tess Deanehan as a teammate. The two cross country standouts, who often have found themselves alone at the head of the pack this fall, work to push each other.Yesterday, the two helped push the Mawrtians to an Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland championship.Kagwima won in 20 minutes, 9 seconds, and Deanehan took second, three seconds back, as Bryn Mawr's 37 team points bettered defending champion Notre Dame Prep by 10 at St. Timothy's.

Sixteen years after competing in his first motorsports race on the Camden Yards parking lot, Monkton professional driver Marc Bunting is returning to the drivers' seat and his roots. Bunting is putting together Team Baltimore Racing, a sports car team, that will compete in the American Le Mans Series race here Sept. 2 as part of the Baltimore Grand Prix weekend. "With the Baltimore race happening, it renewed my interest," said Bunting, 42. "It will be fun to race around Baltimore — legally.

When engine builder Robert Yates decided to become a car owner and build a Winston Cup race team, he did it with the idea that one day maybe his son Doug would want to take over the family business. That's what the father wanted. He just didn't realize how hard it was going to be to give up the keys to the office door. "Certainly, I wanted this for my son," said Yates, 59, whose company, Robert Yates Racing, fields teams for Dale Jarrett and Elliott Sadler, who are in Hampton, Ga., this weekend for Sunday's Atlanta 500. "But you don't know if they really want it. You see people build a wealthy business and kids don't want to touch it. Some of the unhappiest people I've seen are those who have inherited the ship, because it's not about what your ambitions are or were, but about them and their drive."