Dickinson Pleased With Progress of Current Stable

Like a racehorse returning from an extended freshening, Michael Dickinson is back training after spending more than seven years away from the profession at which he has excelled in England and the United States.

On Friday at Pimlico, Dickinson will be running the 4-year-old colt Metaboss in the 12th race, an allowance/optional claiming event on the turf. With the rest of Dickinson's runners, Metaboss is based at his Tapeta Farm, a state-of-the-art, 250-acre training center in North East, Md.

During Dickinson's break from training, he traveled the world to market Tapeta Footings, his enterprise that produces the Tapeta synthetic racing surface used at tracks such as Golden Gate Fields and Presque Isle Downs in the U.S. and Woodbine in Canada.

“During my seven years away, I had what normal trainers don't have, and that was spare time to focus on new methods,” Dickinson said.

Clearly, Dickinson's previous methods of training had been working.

In his native England, Dickinson was a champion steeplechase trainer who earned a spot in the British Steeplechasing Hall of Fame. In an amazing accomplishment, he trained the first five finishers in the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Dickinson, who first ran horses in the United States in 1989, has 588 victories from 2,542 North American starters. They have earned $20.9 million in purses.

Grade 1 winners for Dickinson were Da Hoss, who won the Breeders' Cup Mile in 1996 and 1998; Tapit (2004 Wood Memorial); A Huevo (2003 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash); Cetawayo (2002 Gulfstream Park Breeders' Cup Handicap and 1998 Sword Dancer Invitational); and Fleet Renee (2001 Ashland and Mother Goose).

Dickinson said he's pleased with the progress of his current stable. “We are not fully reorganized yet, but our plans are going well,” he said.

He announced last August that he was ending his retirement, and he has started four horses since returning to training. The first of those, the filly Tide Is High, won an allowance race on the turf at Laurel on April 2.

Metaboss will be making his second start for Dickinson. Last year, Metaboss won the El Camino Real Derby (G3) for trainer Jeff Bonde. Debuting for Dickinson on April 29 at Laurel, Metaboss finished a tough-luck sixth. He was steadied in traffic in the stretch in an allowance/optional claiming race on the turf and lost by 1 ½ lengths.

He has worked twice on turf at the farm since that race. The horses there have several places to train – two Tapeta training tracks, six turf courses, hills and exercise areas.

The farm's Performance Center offers high-tech methods to help horses win races.

“We are just starting to utilize a lot of new technology,” Dickinson said. “We have introduced many new improvements in the last year, including, but not limited to, an auxiliary energy system, a bio-mechanical analyzer, a bronchial delivery system and a bio-marker identification kit.”

But don't get the idea that at age 66, Dickinson is advocating the abandonment of the fundamentals of horsemanship for new-age science.

“We are not eliminating the many good methods used by trainers today,” he said in a brochure available on the Tapeta Farm website. “We are just adding a lot of new ideas. It will be an aggregate of marginal gains. All these facilities at Tapeta Farm give us a lot of levers to pull.”

Dickinson has been known for using all information at his disposal. Before running a horse in a turf race, he'll walk the course to find the best path to victory.

His work with Da Hoss before the 1998 Breeders' Cup Mile earned the trainer worldwide praise. Da Hoss, who because of an injury didn't race in 1997, came into the 1998 Breeders' Cup with only one prep race. Yet Dickinson and his team had Da Hoss ready to roll.

That victory helped cement Dickinson's reputation as “The Mad Genius.” Does he like being called by that title, and does the description still fit?

“They are only half-right,” Dickinson said.

Source: Maryland Jockey Club