Arkansas Derby

Craig Donnelly's analysis of today's 127th running of the 1 1/4-mile Kentucky Derby for 3-year-olds, the first jewel in horse racing's Triple Crown. The purse is $1,112,000 of which $812,000 goes to the winner. Post time is 6:07 p.m. The field is listed in post position order. The number at the left is the horse's listing (betting number) in the program. The jockey is in parentheses. Early-line odds are at right. SELECTIONS: Point Given, Jamaican Rum, Millennium Wind 1. Songandaprayer (Gryder)

Menifee, the hard-knocking Kentucky-bred colt who missed winning the Kentucky Derby by a shrinking neck, yesterday was named the prerace favorite for Saturday's 124th running of the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course at 1 3/16 miles. Charismatic, the 30-1 long-shot Derby winner, is the 6-1 fourth choice in the morning line odds in a maximum field of 14. Ten of the 14 ran in the Derby, which has produced the last 15 Preakness winners. "We're still raving [about Charismatic]

Baltimore has settled on a plan to demolish Memorial Stadium next year to make way for a 446-unit senior housing development and a recreation center. City Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III announced the decision, ending some three years of debate about the fate of the abandoned, 46-year-old stadium and its 30 acres of prime real estate. Completed in 1953, the stadium has been vacant since Dec. 14, 1997, when the Ravens played their last football game there. Memorial Stadium was once the heart of Baltimore sports.

A claiming horse has won the Kentucky Derby. Or at least he was a claiming horse as recently as February, when he lost a $62,500 claimer at Santa Anita Park. But yesterday, running with the elite 3-year-olds of the world, the 30-1 long shot named Charismatic, ridden by a rehabilitated jockey named Chris Antley, clawed his way to the front of a 19-horse field and won the 125th Run for the Roses by a neck. He held off fast-charging Menifee, a 6-1 choice with Pat Day aboard, and finished three-quarters of a length ahead of stablemate Cat Thief, 7-1, ridden by Mike Smith.

The bad jokes are everywhere - on the radio, in the newspapers, and on the backstretch at Churchill Downs - as tomorrow's running of the 125th Kentucky Derby approaches. "Can Valhol run 1 1/4 miles if batteries are not included?" "Yeah, but his extension cord might get in the way. " "Valhol shouldn't be in the Derby. He should run a match race with the Energizer Bunny. " Valhol is the long shot that stunned handicappers April 10 by winning the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park, a spectacular performance that put him in the Derby but may have been aided, some evidence suggests, by a battery device known as a buzzer or machine.

Ever since Greenwood Racing took over Philadelphia Park at the beginning of the decade, everything has been about business generated away from the track, be it off-track betting or phone betting. The facility in Bensalem where the races are run was treated as a nuisance. It was a place where horses could stable and race. But nobody really seemed to care about the few thousand players who rattled around inside the joint. And it showed. Since Hal Handel took over as chief executive officer earlier this year, there seems to be a change in attitude.

Imagine this scenario: One of the most successful horse trainers of his era is minding his own business this winter in Florida when he gets a phone call from the man who owns the Horse of the Year. That horse's trainer has just quit to take a private job promising him millions. When Joe LaCombe said he wanted to talk, Bill Mott "had an idea what he wanted to talk about. " Mott, voted the nation's top trainer in 1995 and 1996 when he guided Cigar to an incredible 16 consecutive wins, has done about everything in his sport - except win a Triple Crown race.

Oaklawn Park, located downtown near the thermal baths, just three blocks from President Clinton's boyhood home on Clark Street, has been Arkansas' biggest tourist attraction almost from the day it was established 94 years ago. But it has never had a visitor quite like the one standing here in Stall 39 in a tin-roofed barn on the back side. Favorite Trick, a modest dark bay 3-year-old colt who has experts scratching their heads in puzzlement, is here to run in today's $500,000 Arkansas Derby on the last big weekend of Kentucky Derby prep races.

Shane Sellers rode Skip Away, a 4-1 shot, to victory in the $700,000 Blue Grass States at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky., and Zarb's Magic outdueled Grindstone in the stretch to record a half-length victory in the $500,000 Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park. The two races, along with Aqueduct's Wood Memorial, are the last major preps for the May 4 Kentucky Derby. Skip Away coasted to a six-length win at rain-soaked Keeneland, winning in a stakes-record 1:47 1/5 for the mile and an eighth.

It's been 20 years since Chris McCarron rode his first race at the old Bowie Race Course. Most apprentice riders start slowly. Some improve gradually. Some never get the knack. Nothing about McCarron was gradual. He was a natural. He started winning right away and has never stopped. As he gets set to ride Kentucky Derby winner Go For Gin in today's Preakness at Pimlico Race Course, McCarron is fewer than 20 victories from 6,000. No rider will have ever gotten there faster. Anybody who saw McCarron ride in that first year, 1974, is not shocked.