At 1:05 this afternoon, three long months after the last race in Maryland, two year-old maiden fillies will face off in a four furlong sprint — and renew a tradition that dates back 125 years: racing at the state fair at Timonium.
Once 40 days, the Timonium meeting is now merely a blink-and-you-miss-it seven day affair. And the two stakes that once punctuated the meet — the Alma North and the Taking Risks — are no more. In fact, most of the racing will be cheap, and it
Former That’s Amore Stable runner Skeleton Crew liked Timonium just fine and posted an easy win there.
will be contested under oddball circumstances: four furlong sprints, 1 1/16 miles around three turns.
It’ll also be about as much fun as you’ll have at a racetrack anywhere. The ferris wheel looms in the background, a nice backdrop to win photos. The smell of all things fried wafts through the air. And a boozy, jovial crowd will fill the grandstand. loosing a big cheer when the horses turn for home, celebrating their victories with gusto, salving their defeats with, well, more beer.
Blog pal Kevin Martin checked out the Big T a couple of years ago (here), and we agreed then that racing had lost something valuable with the demise of the fair meets. Timonium — once part of a network of Maryland fairs holding racing — now is the only fair meet contested east of the Mississippi.
It’s racing as it once was, and for Maryland’s horsemen, home again after a three-month summer break, there’s no place like it.
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