The most interesting woman in racing is not the most successful, but Ellen Charles is the reigning Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association Owner of the Year, so do not pity her.

Besides, there’s still more to know about the 79-year-old Howard County native. A line or two about uncombed hair wouldn’t capture the essence of Albert Einstein, so here are the basics: Granddaughter of a cereal heiress. Daughter of one of the “grandest dames of Maryland racing” and a racing industry careerist. Mother of three. Longtime museum president. Vacationed at what became President Donald Trump’s private quarters. (No, not the White House.) Relative of Glenn Close. (Yes, that Glenn Close.)

Naturally, here was trainer Rodney Jenkins’ reaction upon meeting Charles more than a decade ago: “She’s down-home.” No pretense, no indication she came from high society. Just an animal lover whose passion has taken their Laurel-based Hillwood Stable to the brink of its most prestigious win.

“A horse is just — they either win or lose or place,” Charles said Thursday, a day before her filly Shimmering Aspen was set to run in the $250,000 Black-Eyed Susan at Pimlico Race Course, a Grade II stakes. “It’s pretty cut and dried, and that’s refreshing.”

No shades of gray, a reporter commented. “Except I love gray horses,” she said, laughing, “so I don’t mind shades of gray.”

Charles had no choice but to love horses, not that it was a difficult task. Her father, Merrall MacNeille Sr., was a former steward of Maryland thoroughbred racing who judged the Preakness and thousands of other races in his decades-long career in the industry.

Her mother, Adelaide Close Riggs, was, in her Baltimore Sun obituary, called “certainly one of the grandest dames of Maryland racing and an absolutely wonderful sportswoman” by the former editor of Maryland Horse magazine, after a long career raising horses for equestrian and thoroughbred racing. Praise came easily to the family: In Close, Riggs also had a niece who would go on to Academy Award-nominated roles in “Fatal Attraction” and “Dangerous Liaisons.”

Charles grew up on Happy Retreat, a 540-acre farm near the Howard County village of Daisy, between West Friendship and Lisbon. (About 20 miles away were the grounds that became Merriweather Post Pavilion, named for her maternal grandmother, American Post Foods heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, whom Charles would visit at her Mar-a-Lago residence as a youth.)

Riding on the weekends with her sister, Melissa Cantacuzene, now a horse owner in Virginia, Charles developed an abiding love for horses, if not the skills to master them.

“The family always said that I’ve liked horses a lot better on the ground than I did on their back,” she joked.

Her earliest memories of Preakness Day at Pimlico are shrouded by age and field of vision. “You saw more feet than anything else” as a child, she said, before rattling off what she did remember: large hats and begloved spectators, J. Edgar Hoover and U.S. senators.

Charles in 2014 stepped down after 25 years as board president of the Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens, a decorative arts museum bordering Rock Creek Park in Washington, but she had by then found new material for future biographies.

In 2004, she started racing her own horses in Maryland. She now has 21 horses with Jenkins, who said that as an owner, “you can’t beat her.”

“Sometimes I think we’re running a petting zoo here,” said Jenkins, who also trained Bandbox, the winner of the 2014 Grade III General George at Laurel Park. “She’s that nice to the horses. She loves them.”

For now, her racing career is catching up to another of the four-legged variety. In 2013, an American foxhound and bichon frise she owned were named Best of Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Her lucky charm at the time: a crystal horse brooch. Bought at a dog show, of course.

This weekend, she’ll be at Pimlico to root on Top of Mind in Saturday’s $250,000, Grade II Longines Dixie and two fillies also making the trip. But victory in the Black-Eyed Susan would be, she said, an “incredible moment.”

She turns 80 next month. Good luck getting one more into that life retrospective.

Last out, first in? Multiplier was the last of the Preakness contenders to hit the Pimlico surface for the first time, galloping 11/4 miles Thursday morning under the guidance of trainer Brendan Walsh.

The son of The Factor arrived in Baltimore on Tuesday and had a planned walk day Wednesday.

“I’ve had a couple of Breeders’ Cup runners, but this is my first Classic runner, so it’s very special,” Walsh said. “This is where every trainer wants to be. Hopefully, it’s the first of many. You’d like to have horses like this every year.”

Multiplier drew the No. 1 post, but that wasn’t a problem in the the Grade III Illinois Derby, where he also drew the rail. “So I don’t think it’s going to make that much of a difference with 10 runners,” Walsh said.

War Emblem, in 2002, is the last Illinois Derby winner to capture the Preakness.

No-show: Cloud Computing will be Chad Brown’s first-ever horse in the Preakness, but the Eclipse Award-winning trainer has been hands-off so far this week.

Brown, based in New York, sent traveling assistant Jose Hernandez to Baltimore this week to supervise the training of four horses, including Cloud Computing, the third-place finisher in the Grade II Wood Memorial.

Cloud Computing is owned by Seth Klarman, chief executive and portfolio manager of the Baupost Group. Klarman spent part of his childhood in Baltimore, a few blocks from Pimlico, the son of a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health epidemiologist and Johns Hopkins public health administration professor.

Blasi fond of Pimlico and Marylanders: Scott Blasi, the assistant trainer for both Hence and Lookin At Lee, has good memories from past trips to Baltimore.

Along with trainer Steve Asmussen, Blasi has found himself twice in the winner’s circle after the Preakness, in 2007 with Curlin and two years later with filly Rachel Alexandra.

Blasi has heard the speculation about moving the Preakness to Laurel.

“For me, I’m kind of biased, I don’t race here year-round, it’s hard for us to have an opinion on it, but we’ve run third in with Astrology and won it twice, this place has been very good to us,” Blasi said at Wednesday’s draw party. “You hate to see it go. But we come in here for the best weekend of the year.”

Hot to trot: With stifling humidity and temperatures that rose into the low 90s on Wednesday and Thursday, trainers will be keeping an eye on the thermometer.

The weather is expected to cool off Saturday, with clouds keeping the maximum temperature at about 70 degrees.

That’s just fine with Classic Empire trainer Mark Casse.

“I’d rather it not be too hot, but the way I’m reading it — maybe I’m wrong — it’s going to cool off a little bit on Saturday,” he said Wednesday morning.

“I just think for any horse, the cooler weather’s better.”

jshaffer@baltsun.com

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Baltimore Sun reporter Don Markus contributed to this article.