Dawn had yet to break yesterday when the announcement crackled over the loudspeakers on the Laurel Park backstretch -- an announcement not heard there in seven months.
"Attention horsemen: The track is now open for training."
With that, the arduous reconstruction of the Laurel dirt course finally appeared complete. Begun June 12, the approximately $20 million project was supposed to be finished in September, in time to run turf races the following month on Maryland Million Day. Four broken deadlines later, no sod has been planted to make a turf course, but there is a dirt track that will open for live racing Jan. 22.
"This is like Belmont Park," exclaimed Lisa Jimenez, who astride her gelding Bring Him Gold made the maiden voyage on the muddy course, if you don't count the horse who escaped Saturday from trainer Tim Salzman's barn for a riderless run around. "It's wide. It's wonderful. When that turf course opens, it's going to be fantastic. There were so many naysayers, but they stuck to it and did a great job."
The chief naysayers were the horsemen's leadership, which pleaded with the Maryland Racing Commission last June to not permit the project to go forward without greater planning. The commissioners, by a 4-3 vote, gave Magna Entertainment the go-ahead, and many of the horsemen's concerns subsequently materialized. Delays in permits, environmental reviews, work schedules, ground-water drainage and other issues with the foundation led to repeated setbacks.
Horsemen, meantime, crowded into barns at Pimlico -- where racing has been conducted since the Laurel closure -- as well as the dilapidated Bowie Training Center and at Timonium. When the state fair track conducted horse auctions in September, trainers were made to move again, many to a makeshift tent city raised on the Pimlico backstretch.
Several Laurel-based trainers returned to their home track at that point, forced to jog horses around their barn shed rows to keep them fit, while using Magna-provided vans to shuttle to Bowie for workouts.
"All of those things, when the track opens, are behind us," said Richard Hoffberger, president of the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association. "Our issues were with the way the track was handling the overall [project]. We said early on we wanted to redo the turf course but do it in 2006 and get organized."
Hoffberger said there are 480 fewer horses in training in Maryland than at this time last year because the delay in reopening Laurel kept out-of-town outfits away. Racing secretary Georganne Hale, who cut a ceremonial ribbon at the gap before Jimenez went out yesterday, said only 200 horses are on the grounds at Laurel. She expects nearly 800 by the time racing there resumes.
"A number of factors led to delays and cost us time and money, but Magna stepped up to the plate," said Jim Gagliano, the Magna executive vice president in charge of Maryland racing. "Magna is committed to Maryland racing, and this is the start and the linchpin to our future."
The new 1 1/8-mile dirt course -- roughly 89 percent sand, 11 percent silt and clay, according to track superintendent Glen Kozak -- is 95 feet wide, 20 greater than the old course. The planned turf course will expand from 75 to 142 feet. A new safety rail and more lighting have been installed.
With the new surfaces in place, Magna no longer will return to Pimlico for a fall meet, Gagliano said, using the Baltimore track exclusively for its marquee spring meet, which climaxes with the Preakness Stakes.
Approximately 140 horses went out over the course and safely returned yesterday morning, including all 25 in the barn of veteran trainer Carlos Garcia. Garcia, at the gap by 6 a.m., bantered with the first wave of riders as they ventured out.
"There's not a lot of people here on Sundays," Garcia quipped. "They go to church to pray for a winner."
