DICKINSON goes for the roses

Defying his stereotype as a trainer of older grass horses and steeplechasers, Michael Dickinson has set off on the Triple Crown trail with his juvenile stars Tapit and Paddington. by Bill Finley

There’s everyone else’s vision of Michael Dickinson and Dickinson’s vision of himself, and the two don’t fit neatly together. This is the stereotype:

Dickinson is a grass trainer, he’s quirky, he’s good at patching up problem horses and he loves nothing more than to win a race off some sort of unfathomably long layoff. At least that’s what they say. Dickinson believes he’s versatile, can train young horses and dirt horses and would just as soon run a horse once every four weeks than once every four years. He’d like to be known as a good trainer, just a good trainer.

He may be about to get his chance. In what’s sure to be construed as the ultimate example of trying to smash a large square peg into a tiny impenetrable round hole, Dickinson has taken aim on the one race that seems to be the oddest fit for his program. He wants to win the 2004 Kentucky Derby with either Paddington or Tapit and it doesn’t matter to him one bit that the race isn’t run on the grass, that you can’t run an 8-year-old who hasn’t started in three years or that he’s never gotten anywhere close to Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May.

“I always wanted to be in this position,” Dickinson said from his Tapeta Farm in North East, Md. “I knew it would happen. People kept saying he’s good going long on the grass. But the best rapper is white and the best golfer is black. We all put people in pigeon holes and it’s wrong.”

Of course, it’s easy to pigeon hole someone who comes from England and has a steeplechasing background. Those aren’t exactly the sort of credentials that make you think Kentucky Derby or, for that matter, anything run on the dirt at less than 12 furlongs. But when Dickinson, 53, arrived in the U.S. in 1987, he wanted to win the same races that everyone else wants to win. He made winning a Breeders’ Cup race and the Kentucky Derby at the very top of his list of goals.

But no one wanted to give him the type of horses who fit the American classics. Nor did anyone seem inclined to give him a horse with much talent. Dickinson didn’t exactly get off to a smashing start in the U.S. In 1991, for example, he won just 15 races with 11 starters and his lone stakes win that year came in the $25,000 Continental Mile Stakes at Monmouth. Outside of the Mid-Atlantic region, few even knew who he was.

Then, along came Da Hoss. A gelded son of Gone West, Da Hoss began his career in exactly the type of races that seemed so foreign to Dickinson. Discovered by Jerry Brown, who runs the Thoro-Graph speed figure and data service, after winning some rapidly run dirt sprints at Turf Paradise, Da Hoss was purchased privately by Prestonwood Farm and given to Dickinson. Fittingly, Dickinson converted him to a miler on the turf and the results were immediate. Da Hoss won the 1996 Breeders’ Cup Mile-G1, giving Dickinson his breakthrough win in this country.

But it was the 1998 Breeders’ Cup Mile that brought Dickinson unprecedented attention. With just one race, an allowance at Colonial Downs, in two years, Da Hoss was somehow fit enough and good enough to win the 1998 Mile. It was considered one of the greatest training feats in Breeders’ Cup history, but it all but guaranteed that Dickinson was going to be typecast as a certain kind of trainer.

Dickinson became known as the trainer of lost causes. People didn’t want to give him well-bred 2-year-olds; they wanted to give him their broken down 7-year-old gelding, hoping that Dickinson could work his magic and bring him back to what he once was. Dickinson was, after all, the mad genius of racing, the eccentric Brit who could be seen digging his heels into a turf course an hour before a race. He was whiling away his hours inventing a racing surface that had old tires and balloon strips in it, and was so unbelievably patient that he once won a race with a horse off a five-year layoff.
So he was smart, but did you really want to give this guy a 2-year-old by, say, Seattle Slew? That’s exactly what owner Verne Winchell did when he gave Dickinson Fleet Renee in 2000. A year later, she won the Ashland and Mother Goose, both Grade 1 races on the dirt. It was another turning point in Dickinson’s career. Yes, he could win major races with a well-bred young horse just as easily as he could win with a 9-year-old gelding with little pedigree.

“We gave him Fleet Renee to train and that seemed to work out all right,” said David Fiske, farm manager for the Winchell family, also the owners of Tapit. “We started out like a lot of people. We had grass horses on the West Coast that looked like they were coming to the tail end of their careers and needed special attention. We sent those types of horses to Michael first. After we became familiar with his operation and the training facility he has there in Maryland, we didn’t think it would be that far a jump to try him with some younger horses.”

So, after Vern Winchell bought Tapit for $625,000 at the 2002 Keeneland September Year-ling sale, he sent him to Dick-inson. (Winchell died two months later and ownership was transferred to his son, Ron). About the same time, Dickinson was welcoming Paddington into his barn. Owned by the family of Baron George von Ullman, owners of one of Germany’s most prestigious racing operations, he cost just $40,000 at the sales, but showed early on that he had potential. For the von Ullman family, Dickinson had already proven he could at least win a 2-year-old stakes race. He captured the 2002 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes-G2 at Churchill Downs for them with Soto.

Paddington, who is by Saint Ballado, was a bit ahead of Tapit. In his second career start, he broke his maiden on August 31 at Delaware Park, then won Delaware’s Whirling Ash Stakes, finished fourth in the Grade 1 Champagne at Belmont and second in the Grade 3 Nashua at Aqueduct. He was beaten that day by Read the Footnotes, who won the Remsen in his subsequent start.

“Paddington has a whole lot of talent, he’s just not very focused,” Dickinson said. “We don’t know which way he is going to go. Like 700 other horses, he’s on the Derby trail. But he’s shown us enough, he’s very good-looking and he has the pedigree. But we can’t tell which way he is going to go. We are trying a few things with him. What we always try to do is to think along with the horses. The horses talk to you all the time. The trouble is, we don’t always listen. I’ve got to listen to this horse when he talks to me.”

By mid-November, it was clear that Tapit, nicknamed Dennis the Menace around the barn, was Dickinson’s best prospect. By Pulpit, he broke his maiden at first asking, by seven and three-quarters lengths, at Delaware on October 19. In a much stiffer test, he could not have been more impressive when winning the November 15 Laurel Futurity-G3. Boxed in and a bit rank until a hole opened up in upper stretch, he burst away from the pack with ease and drew clear to win by four and three-quarters lengths under Ramon Dominguez while seemingly never exerting himself.

“We don’t know about him yet,” Dickinson said. “It was just one race. Those who saw it know as much as I do. The dam is by Unbridled, and they all get better with age. So we hope he’ll get better.”

Both Paddington and Tapit completed their 2-year-old seasons in November and will take it easy over the next couple of months before heading down the road that Dickinson hopes will lead to a starting spot in the Kentucky Derby lineup. During his many years in the U.S., he’s never had a serious Kentucky Derby prospect, so he will be heading into uncharted territory. But anyone hoping the mad genius will take a bizarre route to the Kentucky Derby or will try and reinvent the proverbial wheel will be disappointed. Tapit and Paddington will not come into the Derby off six-month layoffs or prep on the grass in England. Dickinson is intent on doing everything as conventionally as possible.

“I can’t experiment,” he said. “I’ll just do whatever is right on that particular day. I know how to get a horse fit. The thing about training is, we never, never say that we did something very well or were brilliant. We should say we made mistakes. Training is not about being brilliant; it’s about not making mistakes. It’s the day-in, day-out that matters. You have to be good every day. It’s the days that you mess up that hurt you.”

Dickinson likes to stay close to his state-of-the-art training center as much as possible, but isn’t about to train two Kentucky Derby prospects in the middle of winter in Maryland. So Tapit, Paddington and three other horses were scheduled to be sent to the Palm Meadows training center in Florida around January 1. He chose Palm Meadows over Gulf-stream because it is the more serene setting and he believes the air quality is better there. This will be the first time that Dickinson has competed in south Florida.

The Dickin-son contingent will be under the direct care of assistant Lisa Davison. Dickin-son and assistant Joan Wakefield will make frequent trips to Florida to look in on the horses.

No races have been picked out for the two yet and Dickinson said Tapit’s schedule will be left up to Fiske. But both will likely have two or three Kentucky Derby preps and they will come in the usual races, the Fountain of Youth, Florida Derby, Louisiana Derby, Wood Memorial or Blue Grass.

Dickinson knows that people will be curious to see if he is the right man for the job. He argues that he is. The statistics, at least, bear out his contention that he’s more versatile than people seem to believe. Through December 10, he had won 35 races this year, 18 on the dirt and 17 on the grass. His winning percentage in races at less than a mile was 33 percent as compared to 22 percent in races at a mile or longer. His two biggest wins this year were on the dirt, the $600,000 West Virginia Derby-G3 with Soto and the $300,000 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash-G1 with still another reclamation project, A Huevo.

He also knows that when it comes to winning big races he has a history of success. Long before he won his Breeders’ Cups with Da Hoss, Dickinson was the dominant trainer in English steeplechase racing. In one of the most remarkable feats in racing history, he trained the first five finishers in the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup.

“I’ve got enough confidence in my own ability,” he said. “The Kentucky Derby of English steeplechasing is the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Americans may not think it is much, but the fact is the English bet more on that race than is bet on the Kentucky Derby. When I was 33, I had five horses in the race and it was my third season training. I’ve won two Breeders’ Cups and I am smart enough to realize that if you’ve got a horse that is good enough you can nearly always do it and no one can train a bad one to win a race like the Derby.”

For the first time in his career. Dickinson may have horses good enough to win the Kentucky Derby, a race he covets. The race doesn’t always have to be won by a Bob Baffert or Wayne Lukas. Maybe it can be won by a good trainer with a few different ideas who’s never had a chance to prove himself on this particular stage. Maybe it can be won by Michael Dickinson.