It's been a long time since there was thoroughbred racing in Rhode Island -- nearly 30 years, ever since Narragansett Park closed in 1978.

But there still are Rhode Islanders involved in thoroughbred racing.

There were local connections galore Saturday at Belmont Park on the first weekend of the venerable track's highly-regarded fall meet.

Four of the horses that ran that day are owned by Rhode Islanders, including two in the first race, run at a mile on the grass. One of them, Ever A Friend, belongs to Michael Rankowitz, a former captain of the Tolman High basketball team, who, after graduation from the University of Vermont, went on to a highly-successful career on Wall Street as a bond trader. The other, El Prado Rob, runs in the colors of Ochre House Stable, a syndicate recently put together by Alan Zura, the longtime owner of Roth Ticket Agency, and such a fan of racing that he bought a house in Saratoga, where he spends the summer.

Lowell Kinch, a real-estate developer who grew up in Pawtucket, had Coup De Grace entered in a claiming race for $10,000 in the fourth race, while, in the fifth, a Maiden (non-winners) Special Weight on turf at a mile, Richard DiSano and Julian "Butch" DeMarco had North East Storm, a half-brother to North East Bound, which ran second as a 42-1 longshot in the Breeders' Cup Mile in 2000 at Churchill Downs.

Meanwhile, down at Delaware Park, former Fleet Bank chairman Terry Murray, who now heads Namcook Stable, ran his top-class turf horse, Spider Power, in a $500,000 stakes race.

None of them won Saturday, or even finished "in the money" -- among the top three finishers -- but that, as they say, is horse racing.

"It's the only business I know," Kinch said with a chuckle, "where people with money are dying to lose it. They get into (racing) and they get hooked. They love it. They'll accept a lot of setbacks to get that one moment of glory in the winner's circle."

Kinch got into racing just as it was dying out in Rhode Island.

"I claimed my first horse, District Judge, for $4,250 at Suffolk Downs in 1978," he recalled. "It ran two weeks later for $5,250 and won. I've been stuck with the bug ever since."

Kinch said he has had over 300 winners since then, and "couldn't even guess" how many horses.

Like Rankowitz, Kinch also went to Tolman High, where he played baseball. The two of them saw their first races as teenagers at 'Gansett.

"When I was old enough to get an allowance," Rankowitz said, "my brother and I would go to Narragansett, hop the fence, sneak in, and bet the races. I enjoyed the action. But most of the fun was just being there. You see a lot of different personalities at the race track."

You see Murray, who became of the leading bankers in the country, and you see DeMarco, who runs a landscaping business in Cranston.

Along with DiSano, DeMarco purchased a broodmare named North East Dancer in the late '80s. Her best foal was North East Bound, which came within a neck of winning the Breeders' Cup Mile after leading most of the race. North East Storm is a 3-year-old son of Fusaichi Pegasus, the Kentucky Derby winner in 2000.

Ironically, they paid $125,000 to have North East Dancer bred to Fusaichi Pegasus, a mating that produced a colt which has yet to win a race, and only $2,500 to breed North East Dancer to D'Accord, the sire of Northeast Bound, which went on to win more than $1 million on the track.

"You never know," DeMarco said. "It's a funny game."

It helps to have a sense of humor.

"I had a pretty decent mare that I bred to Lord Avie (champion 2-year-old of 1980) in Kentucky," Kinch said. "I had her shipped to New York, to a farm near Saratoga, so the foal would be eligible to run in New York-bred races.

"I went to Florida that winter with my family and asked the farm manager, a Virginian with a Southern drawl, to call me when the foal dropped. We're in Miami when the phone rings at 8:30 one morning and it's the farm manager on the line."

" 'Mistuh Kinch,' he said, 'Ah've got bad news. Your foal was stillborn. But at least your mare is OK."

That meant Kinch got no return on the $50,000 stud fee he'd paid the owners of Lord Avie.

"The next morning," said Kinch, "I got another call from the farm manager."

" ' Mistuh Kinch, y'all are not gonna believe this, but your mare died overnight.'

"I had to hang up the phone," Kinch said. "The mare was worth about $100,000. So now I'm out $150,000. The next morning, I get another call from the barn manager.

" 'Mistuh Kinch?'

"What is it now?'

" 'I'm sorry, Mistuh Kinch, but I had to ask: Y'all want those horses buried in one hole, or two?' "

For many people, that would have spelled the end of their interest in racing. Not Kinch.

"I'm one of those nutty people who got hooked on racing," he said. "That story pretty much sums up what horse owners are all about."

jdonalds@projo.com / (401) 277-7340