Horse Racing
Notebook: Dickinson fights uphill battle
NORTH EAST, Md. â?? In addition to usual feed, Michael Dickinson nourishes each of his horses with a daily combination of three eggs and a bottle of Guinness Stout.
Rather than training the horses at a racetrack, he does it here on his postcard-perfect Tapeta Farm on the upper Chesapeake Bay.
Instead of galloping them around a flat, dirt oval, he runs them slightly uphill on long, grass courses or on another course layered with his patented mix of sand and "secret ingredients." He said it is all designed to ease pounding on their vulnerable front legs.
Dickinson's methods will be tested. He is running Wood Memorial winner Tapit, a dappled gray colt with four career races, in Saturday's Kentucky Derby.
"I suppose I'm trying to demonstrate that there is another way," said the 54-year-old native of England, who is making his Derby debut.
"Obviously, I'm controversial. I mean (Hall of Fame trainer) Woody Stephens was never a fan of training anyone on the farm. But they never had a farm like Tapeta."
In 1998, an editorial cartoon in Daily Racing Form dubbed Dickinson "The Wizard of Tapeta Farm." It depicted him as a wand-waving sorcerer after he won his second Breeders' Cup Mile, run on turf, in three years with injury-plagued Da Hoss.
Dickinson also has been labeled "Mad Genius."
"They're only half right," he said.
Dickinson is bent on disproving the stereotype that he is strictly suited for training horses that run on turf courses. "The world is changing," he said.
And now an uphill trainer with an aversion to dirt is in the Derby, a 1-¼-mile race on dirt.
"He's certainly not mad," said David Fiske, manager of Winchell Thoroughbreds, which owns Tapit. "He's a perfectionist. ... I think a lot of that has to do with the way he was brought up. And his parents were trainers, and he was a jump rider himself and a steeplechase trainer. And I think he brought a lot of that European sensibility with him."
Dickinson was a young steeplechase rider when he began working summers for legendary Irish trainer Vincent O'Brien. He recalled his first visit to Ballydoyle, a training center in Ireland: "If I'd seen the Great Wall of China, the Niagara Falls and the Pyramids all in the same day, it couldn't have had more of an effect. ... I'm just copying what a little Irishman did 40 years ago."
O'Brien gave his horses Guinness and eggs. They won jumping and flat races. He trained them up instead of wearing them down.
Tapeta Farm, opened in 1998, is Dickinson's Ballydoyle. He is focused on every facet of the 200-acre, 50-horse, 26-employee operation. The barns have skylights.
"Most stalls are like prison cells," he said. "I like to design my stalls like hotel rooms."
In the evening, Dickinson jogs his courses to check for divots.
"What makes them go lame? Speed, turns and dirt," he said.
His horses train on the grass and the all-weather course, each with one, gradual curve. "There's a lot of pressure on the horses' legs around the turn, so we try to go on straightaways as much as we can," he said.
The courses run up a gradual incline to ease pounding on horses' front legs. Veterinarian Kathleen Anderson, who tends to the horses, said of the incline, "It makes a difference. ... You increase the cardiovascular work without increasing the risk."
Dickinson said, given the wide-open Kentucky Derby field, the horses all should get 10-1 odds. Would he bet Tapit at 10-1?
"I've already bet enough on him â?? by betting the farm," he said.
Notes
â?¢ A federal judge in Louisville questioned a Kentucky regulation that bars jockeys from wearing ads but ignores racetrack corporate sponsorship. U.S. District Judge John Heyburn said "it's hard to make a distinction" between a logo on a jockey's silks and a corporate ad at Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby.
"There's commercialism all over the racetrack," Heyburn said. "You can't have one regulation because you're a jockey and one regulation" for a track.
A group of jockeys asked Heyburn to block the state regulation. The judge said he expected to rule by today.
â?¢ Unbeaten Madcap Escapade is the 3-1 morning-line favorite for Friday's Kentucky Oaks, the fillies-only precursor to the Kentucky Derby.
The 1-1/8-mile Oaks attracted a field of 12.
Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company
