With the old year behind us and the new one – in racing terms, at least – a couple of weeks in the future yet, it’s a good time to look back at the year that was.

It was a tumultuous year for the Maryland Thoroughbred industry, and what happened in 2024 will likely reverberate through the years to come. On and off the racetrack, there was a lot going on.

Here are eight stories that mattered from Maryland in 2024.

GREY PREAKNESS

D. Wayne Lukas appeared to be an afterthought at this year’s 149^th running of the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico. His Kentucky Derby runner, Just Steel, had pressed the pace in Louisville before fading to 17th. Pat Day Mile winner Seize the Grey seemed a cut below the better horses of his generation.

Whoops. Scratch that.

Because in the Middle Jewel, Seize the Grey, under a suitably aggressive Jaime Torres ride, seized the initiative – and the day – en route to a dominant 2 ¼-length victory that gave Lukas, racing’s living legend, his seventh win in the Middle Jewel. That’s the second most of all time and leaves him one behind Bob Baffert for the top spot.

For the second-to-last Preakness at this crumbling version of Old Hilltop, it was a pretty satisfying conclusion to see one of Old Hilltop’s biggest fans winning its biggest race once again.

“This place has become special,” Lukas said of Old Hilltop. “And I can speak, I think, for Bob Baffert – I’m only one behind him, I already warned him – this place has been a lot of fun for all of us.”

A NEW ERA BEGINS…

When the calendar pages flipped to 2025, it ushered in a new era for Maryland racing.

The old model – private ownership of the racetracks – is no more, replaced by something of a hybrid approach, in which a new nonprofit version of the Maryland Jockey Club will manage racing in the state under the auspices of the state-created Maryland Thoroughbred Racetrack Operating Authority (MTROA).

If all goes according to plan – and, given the fraught history of these things, Maryland’s horsemen will be forgiven for adopting a Missourian show-me attitude – in a few years, Laurel will close, a new training center in Woodbine will open, and all racing outside of the Maryland State Fair meet will take place at a brand-new Pimlico.

The racing calendar has been slimmed down to 120 days at the so-called “mile tracks” plus seven at Timonium for 2025, a significant reduction that will see Maryland racing dark during July and most of August.

It is, MTROA chairman Greg Cross has said, a “bet on ourselves” model for the state’s racing industry. Here’s hoping they’ve backed a winner.

… AND THE OLD ONE ENDS

The kickoff of this new era also, and necessarily, closes the books on the Stronach Group (1/ST Racing) era of ownership in Maryland. Well, not completely: the company still owns the Preakness intellectual property and will manage that event for the next two years.

It’s likely that few in Maryland will mourn the end of this era, though in fairness, it’s a more mixed bag that some would suggest. For detractors, there’s plenty to point to: the failure to obtain the slots license at Laurel, the atrocious condition of Pimlico, the never-ending issues with the Laurel Park main track, the disastrously ill-fated effort to make Laurel a “super-track” and Pimlico a… what, exactly? Heck, there’s even the Laurel “sports book” which has everything a sports bettor could want except… you know… sports betting.

Still, though, it’s also true that the company has continued to run basically a year-round calendar in Maryland despite consistently losing money. And the 10-year deal that all those years ago the Stronach Group and horsemen negotiated – with a heavy assist from the Maryland Racing Commission – was a forward-thinking, if imperfect, compact that brought relative peace and predictability to the industry for a decade.

HAPPY ENDINGS

In the closing days of 2024, a pair of familiar runners got both one last win and the proper ending to their careers.

Galerio, a stakes winner and earner of nearly $700,000, won three straight to close his career, the final victory coming in a $5,000 claimer at Delta Downs. Bird Mobberley and Grady Griffin (who race as Bird and Grady LLC) teamed up with Louisiana-based trainer Brett Brinkman to claim the now-nine-year-old out of that race to retire him: a great gift to a Maryland-bred who had run competitively for several different trainers over a number of years.

Then on Dec. 22, Clubman, then 10 and about to age out of being able to race in Maryland, rallied from far back to win a starter/optional claimer for the 20^th win of his 86-race career. A two-time stakes winner who was claimed multiple times, Clubman concluded his racing career with owner-trainer Joanne Shankle who hopes to convert him into a stable pony.

“I took him back to run in the Maryland Million,” Shankle said. “I was going to retire him after the Maryland Million [a starter handicap win], but he’s the kind of horse that don’t want to retire.”

WHAT TIME IS IT? IT’S POST TIME

Vielsalm was a pretty good racehorse, a stakes winner of over $300,000. But she’ll be remembered not so much for what she did on the track as what she did in the breeding shed; Vielsalm is the dam of Post Time.

The Maryland-bred Post Time, a colt by Frosted, showed plenty of talent at two and three. But in 2024, at four, he became a major star.

Trained by Brittany Russell for Ellen Charles’s Hillwood Stable LLC, Post Time won four of nine 2024 starts, including victories in the Grade 3 General George and Grade 2 Carter, his first graded stakes wins.

After spending much of the year racing in New York, he returned home to Laurel to dominate the Polynesian Stakes as a final prep for the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile. What an effort he put forth that day: under regular pilot Sheldon Russell, husband of the trainer, Post Time rallied from last of the 13 runners to finish second, just 1 ½ lengths behind winner Full Serrano.

Trainer Brittany Russell has built a highly successful, high-end operation in recent years, with purse earnings nearing $8 million in each of the last two seasons, and no horse has done more to advance her business than has Post Time, now an earner of $1.2 million.

THE PASSING OF RODNEY JENKINS

Speaking of Ellen Charles and Hillwood Stable: For years, one of the most successful pairings of owner and trainer in Maryland was that of her operation with trainer Rodney Jenkins. Jenkins, a Hall of Famer in show jumping, passed away in early December at age 80.

The Jenkins-Hillwood combo campaigned some of Maryland’s best and most popular horses of recent vintage. Tops among that group was Cordmaker, the Curlin gelding who won 14 races, including the 2022 General George (G3), and earned over $1 million.

Other notable runners trained by Jenkins for Hillwood included the Grade 3 winner and now sire Bandbox, two-time Maryland Million Turf winner Phlash Phelps, and the talented Shimmering Aspen.

Jenkins completed his career with 941 wins and nearly $25 million in purse earnings.

CHANGING OF THE GUARD

Usually retirements of state bureaucrats don’t merit much mention in the media.

But it’s a little different when the bureaucrat in question has worked for the state Racing Commission for 40 years – 24 of those as its executive director.

Mike Hopkins retired on the last day of 2024, concluding a career that began in 1984 and saw too many changes to count. He began working for the Commission at a time when Maryland had three “mile tracks” in Laurel, Pimlico, and Bowie, all under separate private ownership. As he leaves, the plan is for Maryland to get down to a single track – Pimlico – owned by the state.

For all that he’s seen and experienced, Hopkins believes the glass is half-full.

“I’m still an optimist,” Hopkins says. “I think there’s a place for horse racing in this state.”

HAVE A GANSETT

One of the more fun stories of the year took place in February and March.

That’s when, in the span of nine days, trainer Michael Gorham sent out three full siblings – all by Maryland sire Mosler and out of the winning Jump Start mare Gansett – to win at Laurel Park.

The first, Captain Quint, won a Maryland-bred allowance Feb. 23. Then on March 1, the filly Touisset won a first-level allowance. The next day, the youngest of the trio, then-two-year-old Quint’s Brew, broke his maiden at first asking.

“Kind of crazy” is how Gorham termed the feat of winning with three full sibs in less than two weeks.

As for the two “Quint” horses: Gansett, the mare, is named for Rhode Island’s now-shuttered racetrack, Narragansett Park, which shared a nickname, ‘Gansett, with Narragansett Beer. In the movie Jaws, the shark hunter, Captain Quint, is seen drinking Narragansett.

“That’s the correlation,” Gorham said. “[Co-owner Paul Berube] put a little thought into it.”

As the beer’s jingle went: Hi neighbor, have a ‘Gansett!

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