The ninth annual Maryland Million Day was highlighted by racing’s latest storybook horse, Taking Risks, who captured the $150,000 Classic in track record time of 1:543⁄5 for 13⁄16 miles, and became Two Punch’s first Maryland Million winner.
Thanks to his winning homebred Warning Glance, Stuart S. Janney III entered a four-way tie with Hal C.B. Clagett, Anderson Fowler and Glade Valley Farms as leading Maryland Million breeder; J. William Boniface took the lead in trainer standings; and Caveat moved to the top of the sire rankings.

• Following an injunction and three weeks of negotiations surrounding Two Punch’s proposed move to Kentucky, it was declared the Mid-Atlantic’s leading sire would stay in Maryland at Northview Stallion Station when owners Eleanor Ross and Charles Taylor agreed to sell him to Richard Golden, co-owner of Northview, and his partners. Golden fully syndicated the horse in one day, selling 30 shares for $1.8 million.
  
  
• Maryland was the only Mid-Atlantic state to make the top 10 list according to The Jockey Club’s 1992-93 breeding statistics for stallions, ranking sixth in live-foal production (1,630) and seventh in breeding activity (2,479 mares bred). The nation’s registered foal crop declined by about 6 percent in 1993. Some 6,858 stallions covered 65,759 mares in 1992, resulting in 40,452 foals in 1993.
  
  
• West Virginia-bred Soul of the Matter won by a neck over Maryland-bred Concern in the Super Derby-G1 at Louisiana Downs, showcasing the strength of the Mid-Atlantic region in Grade 1 competition in just a little over a month. Adding Grade 1 scores were Virginia-bred Paradise Creek in the Arlington Million; Colonial Affair, also hailing from Virginia, who became the Mid-Atlantic’s newest millionaire with his victory in Saratoga’s Whitney Handicap; Maryland-bred Taking Risks in the Phillip H. Iselin Handicap at Monmouth; and Virginia-bred Prenup in Belmont’s Jerome Handicap.
  
  
• The Virginia Racing Commission awarded a track operator’s license to Arnold Stansley for the state’s first race track. The proposed $40 million facility, Colonial Downs, would be along I-64 in New Kent County, southeast of Richmond, on 345 acres of land owned by the Chesapeake Corporation. A Maryland/Virginia racing circuit was chartered for the summer of 1996, with Laurel and Pimlico agreeing not to race during Stansley’s 102-day Thoroughbred meet.