Dickinson Announces Return to Training

A muggy Monday in August seems like an unlikely time for a bit of fresh air to waft over the United States racing scene.

But the hint of breeze that arrived in the form of a quirky, self-styled press release out of Maryland to start this week's news cycle could blow into a more forceful wind of change by the time autumn rolls around: The “Mad Genius” is making a comeback to training racehorses.

Sixty-five-year-old Michael W. Dickinson–the former British champion amateur jumps jockey-turned-professional trainer; he of multiple racing-related entries in the Guinness Book of World Records who quit training to spearhead a synthetic racing surface company–has announced a return to active training.

An eight-year layoff should represent only a minor hurdle for the highly driven Dickinson. After all, this is a man whose unorthodox conditioning skills enabled the physically hobbled Da Hoss to win the GI Breeders' Cup Mile in both 1996 and 1998 with only a single prep race in between, prompting NBC racecaller Tom Durkin to dub the feat “the greatest comeback since Lazarus.”

Dickinson will train exclusively off his expansive 250-acre Tapeta Farm in the town of North East, Maryland. Nicknamed “Chantilly of the Chesapeake,” the centerpiece of the lush, grassy facility is Dickinson's proprietary-formula synthetic training track that consists of Tapeta (Latin for “carpet”) footing. Dickinson envisions between 20 and 30 horses will eventually be under his care as the sole trainer on the property, and he will target the top levels of U.S. racing.

Dickinson last saddled a horse as a licensed trainer at Turfway Park on Dec. 8, 2007. Shortly thereafter, he retired from conditioning at the request of his wife, Joan Wakefield, so the two, in partnership, could grow the Tapeta Footings track surface business. Since then, they have traveled to 15 countries together–including Australia, Britain, Dubai, Syria, Morocco, Singapore and Japan–pitching, testing, and installing their synthetic surface, whose ever-evolving compositional recipe is now in its 10th iteration.

“I had no intention of going back to training,” Dickinson told TDN in a Monday phone interview. “But during my time [away], I started all the time looking for new [training] ideas. The last three years I've been trying those new ideas, but most of them failed. That's a fact of life, but we've found a few that do [work].”

Dickinson continued: “When I trained before, once we bought the farm, we won eight Grade I races. But I was never really happy with the results. In fact, I wasn't remotely happy. I felt we could have done better. So I'm doing this to prove to myself that I can do better. That's it. But I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm really looking forward to it. I've got the enthusiasm and energy of a 22-year-old, and I'm fit and healthy.”

It's not unusual for a Thoroughbred trainer to retire and come back. But what is refreshing about Dickinson is that he sets his bar extremely high for personal goals and has never been afraid to made drastic career changes, even if those switches have meant uprooting himself and his family from a comfortable lifestyle to satisfy his insatiable quest for new challenges.

Or to put it another way: How many horsemen with a training resume that includes three British steeplechasing titles, a win in the Racing Post poll of the 100 greatest training feats in the last 100 years (for saddling the first five finishers of 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup), an election into the British Steeplechasing Hall of Fame, the Sir Peter O'Sullevan Lifetime Award of Merit (2007), and a runner-up in the U.S. Eclipse award balloting for trainer of the year in North America (1998) would consider those accomplishments so unsatisfying that they felt the need to take another crack at training just to set the record straight?

Born in Yorkshire, England, Dickinson progressed from an amateur to a professional steeplechase jockey in the 1970s before switching his career to training jumpers. Two of his formative years were spent under the tutelage of Vincent O' Brien, the legendary Irish trainer who was master of Ballydoyle, the training center in County Tipperary.

On Boxing Day 1982, Dickinson trained a record 12 winners (one of his five Guinness world record entries). Later in the 80s, he briefly trained flat horses for noted owner Robert Sangster before immigrating to Maryland, where he had his first U.S. runner on June 30, 1987.

It took Dickinson a few years to establish himself as a U.S. trainer. But right off the bat it was clear his conditioning style went against the grain of conventionality. Turf writer Jay Hovdey aptly summed up how Dickinson came to acquire his “Mad Genius” moniker in his book “Long Rein: Tales from the World of Horse Racing”:

“Nicknames are tough to live down, especially when they are thickly applied by a doting media… Thoroughbred trainer Michael Dickinson gets saddled with 'Mad Genius'…because he wins races in ways not readily explained by conventional means…Dickinson has borrowed generously from such role models as Charlie Whittingham, Don Quixote and Sherlock Holmes…At various times [Dickinson] has tilted at such formidable windmills as the Hong Kong Jockey Club, the Breeders' Cup, and the West Virginia Racing Commission…He will diagram a race for a jockey, furlong by furlong, or fax them a pre-race evaluation of their chances, with columns listing positives and negatives.”

When asked by TDN what would be different about his methods this time around, Dickinson said, “A lot of technology. More experience obviously. We're going to have everything we had before, and a whole lot more.

“We didn't limit [the recent testing of training methods] to one thing,” Dickinson continued. “It was conditioning, technology, health. Better warning signs. Looking for the 'orange light' before we see the 'red light.' Of all these things together, it's difficult to say which is going to be the most important. Probably none of them are that important on their own. It's going to be an aggregate of marginal gains.”

Dickinson was not exactly evasive–“charmingly cryptic” might be a better way to phrase it–when asked to explain some of the new methods he briefly mentioned in the press release that announced his return to training.

“We want to keep them to ourselves really. I hope you don't mind that. It cost us a lot of money,” Dickinson apologized.

One of the proprietary technologies Dickinson said he was at liberty to disclose involves “high altitude stables” that are just now being installed in his stalls.

“But it's not just for high altitudes,” Dickinson said. “It can simulate any environment we wish, and there are quite a few options.”

Another is a “biomechanical analyzer.”

“It is a scientific technology that advises us when horses are moving at their best, or, more importantly, when they're not at their best,” Dickinson said. “You can't go out and buy one.”

A third is a “broncho delivery system.”

“That too, is proprietary,” Dickinson said, unwilling to reveal specifics. “But it does help horses to utilize oxygen much better.”

And how about clients? Will Dickinson be relying on previous owners moving horses to him from existing stables or will he be welcoming inquiries from new owners?

“The answer is both,” Dickinson said. “I have a few clients who have told me that if I ever start training again, they'd send me a horse or two. We won't have horses for at least another month, and I wouldn't imagine we'll have that many this fall. This type of training is quite labor-intensive, quite intense, so I don't want too many.”

Dickinson said about 20 or 30 horses is his sweet spot for being able to manage them properly.

“Any age, any sex, any color any distance. As long as they can run,” Dickinson quipped.

Dickinson said he plans to race the bulk of his horses in New York, “but we can run where we want. That's the beauty of not being stabled at a racetrack.”

Dickinson said the Tapeta Footings business has been primarily under the control of Wakefield for the past three years. He did not want to offer specific comments for the record about the recent phasing out of synthetic surfaces in U.S. racing (Golden Gate Fields and Presque Isle Downs are two tracks that continue to utilize Tapeta), but he said, in general, “a good synthetic track has got a place anywhere.”

Dickinson said he does not expect his work with growing the synthetic surfaces business overseas to interfere with his re-entry into training in the U.S.

After discussing the pragmatic research and goal-oriented ambitions that drove Dickinson to decide to return to training, only one question–dealing with his emotions–remained to be asked.

Did he miss racing?

“Not to begin with, no,” Dickinson said after a long pause. “But I'm glad I had the break. I wasn't training, but I always had horses. I could never have a horse-free life, because my job took me to wherever there were horses.

“Life without a horse would be hell for me. My drive comes from the love of the horse, which is why I love racing. But my love of the horse is a stronger drive than my love of racing.”