I was looking at some photos
of Da Hoss taken recently at the Kentucky Horse Park and was happy to see how
physically well and seemingly content he looked, much like he did when he was
at Michael Dickinson's Tapeta Farm in Maryland, where he lived a blissful life
in that scenic and pastoral environment.
Looking at Da Hoss in these
photos brought back memories of 1998 and one of the most amazing performances
and training feats anyone will ever see. Having visited Tapeta several times
that year I was able to get a first-hand look at what Dickinson and his staff
were up against trying to get Da Hoss back to the Breeders' Cup Mile, two years
after his victory at Churchill Downs.
Before we get to the events
of 1998, it's best to start with Da Hoss himself and the numerous physical
ailments that plagued him his entire life. As a foal, he developed an infection
in his hoof and it rotted away a quarter of his coffin bone. As a yearling, he
developed two bone spurs in his hocks, which eventually became arthritic. Those
two problems were the root of most of Da Hoss' future problems.
As a yearling, he sold for a
mere $6,000 and wound up at Turf Paradise as a 2-year-old. He showed right from
the start he had tremendous speed, blazing six furlongs in 1:07 1/5 in the ATBA
Stakes, the fastest time ever recorded by a 2-year-old. At 3, he won graded
stakes on dirt and turf on both coasts from six furlongs to 1 1/8 miles, while
making three separate trips to California.
As a 4-year-old, he won
stakes at Saratoga and Penn National before
capturing the Breeders' Cup Mile at Woodbine, defeating the top-class Spinning
World, who would win the BC Mile the following year at Hollywood Park.
Then, while at the top of his game, Da Hoss disappeared from the racetrack for
two years. All the while the gelding was away battling physical problems, Dickinson had dreams of a
second Breeders' Cup Mile victory, but this seemed more of a pipedream. Dickinson was known throughout
the racing world as "The Mad Genius," and it would take a bit of madness and
lot of genius to make it come true.
In 1997, Da Hoss developed a
problem with his tendon in March, then ankle problems in June. In September, he
went lame behind for two to three weeks. Before Dickinson knew it, the entire year was lost,
and it wasn't about to get better. In February, 1998, Da Hoss developed some
heat in his tendon, the result of a tear, and Dickinson had to stop on him. He walked him
for a month and then jogged him for a month, but when he was just about ready
to begin serious training, Dickinson
noticed he was moving horribly and had to give him more time let him work his
way through it.
All the while, Da Hoss was
frolicking about with his best friend Boomer, known in racing circles as
Business is Boomin, a 9-year-old horse. Dickinson
had already performed a miracle with Boomer, which gave him hope he could duplicate
it with Da Hoss. All the Mad Genius did with Boomer was get him to win three
straight races in 1997...off a five-year layoff. That was unheard of. On May 8,
1997, exactly five years to the day since his last start, Boomer won a $15,000
claiming race at Garden
State Park by 6 3/4
lengths. Boomer and Da Hoss had become so inseparable, Dickinson couldn't afford to risk losing Boomer
in a claiming race, so he jumped him up to allowance company and he won both,
at Monmouth and Laurel. After a second and a fourth, Boomer went lame again and
was on the shelf for another 10 months. Dickinson
finally got him back the following June, and Boomer proceeded once again to win
his first three races back, all at Delaware
Park.
Boomer had such as phenomenal
disposition, Michael would let my then 14-year-old daughter ride him whenever
we visited. A great deal of the credit for Boomer's remarkable comeback went to
Michael's partner in life Joan Wakefield. The horse had such soft bones that
every time he'd train over the dirt he went lame. Wakefield turned him into a pony and would
ride him to a friend's barn each morning for her coffee break. She began to
notice him feeling stronger by the day, and that's when it was decided to try
to bring him back to the races.
In April 1998, Dickinson, who
patented the first synthetic surface, calling it Tapeta, opened his
state-of-the-art, 200-acre Tapeta Farm in North East, Md. for training. Boomer and Da Hoss were
stabled next to each other and shared the same paddock. My daughter would go
into the paddock and just lie on the grass picking flowers and clover while Da
Hoss and Boomer grazed within inches of her. Da Hoss would often come right up
to her and check out the floral arrangements in her hand. But one thing was
certain, wherever Boomer was, Da Hoss was close by.
"Da Hoss worships Boomer," Wakefield said during one
of our visits. "He follows him around like a little dog."
All during 1998, Dickinson kept thinking
Breeders' Cup for Da Hoss. The other devoted members of Dickinson's crew who worked feverishly on Da
Hoss' aches and pains were groom Miguel Piedra and exercise rider Jon (Jon Boy)
Ferriday.
Dickinson has always been a perfectionist and not even the
smallest detail escapes him. His vast network of brain cells always seems to be
active, and he runs around like a revved up a machine where the gears are in
constant motion. No matter how many times Dickinson
was told Da Hoss had little chance of making it to the Breeders' Cup, he never
gave up hope. This is a man who made it into the Guinness Book of World Records
for saddling the first five finishers in the Cheltenham Gold Cup and for
sending out 12 winners in a single day.
On April 29, Dickinson had an ultrasound taken of Da Hoss'
tendon and did little with him for a week, eventually walking him each day for
almost an hour along the tree-lined paths with Ferriday on his back. On May 30,
Da Hoss began jogging, and after a week, the jogs were increased to two a day.
He finally began light gallops on June 21. Four days later, Dickinson faxed a letter to owners Art, Jack,
and J.R. Preston of Prestonwood Farm, which read:
"Da Hoss' tendon was scanned
last week and our vet was unable to find any problem...The technician at New
Bolton Center says Da Hoss' tendons heal very quickly...I've worked out a plan to
get him to the Breeders' Cup with just one race before. I have time in hand if
nothing goes wrong."
But those final words "if
nothing goes wrong" came back to haunt him. It didn't take long for something
to go wrong. On July 10, Dickinson
sent the Prestons another fax:
"Dr. Ross examined Da Hoss
today, and he thought he had muscle atrophy on the left hind and was
moving worse than he had ever seen him...It is disappointing to us all...My goal is
still the Breeders' Cup."
All the while, Piedra rarely
left Da Hoss' side, working on him constantly, especially the arthritis in his
joints, which required extensive massaging. Then there was the hosing of the
horse's hocks. Plastic tubes were attached to his knees, allowing for a
continuous trickle of water to down his legs. Piedra spent six hours a day in
the stall with the horse, rubbing him, giving him physiotherapy, massage
treatments, ice treatments, and laser treatments.
Wakefield was the one who was able to get into Da Hoss' head.
Like with Boomer, she could read him like no one else and would know if
something was going to go wrong two days before anyone else. Ferriday would
walk the course every night before Da Hoss breezed, looking for the perfect
ground. Once he found it, he would move the cones to the spot where he wanted
Da Hoss to be. Also instrumental was farrier Gary Reynolds, who shod Da Hoss
and worked on his feet.
Despite all this, the vet
reports weren't encouraging, and no one except for Dickinson and his team felt
Da Hoss had any shot of making the Breeders' Cup.
One of Da Hoss' problems was
that he often was too willing and would do more than he was supposed to. He was
competitive in his gallops even to the point where he would try to pass Wakefield's car as she
drove alongside the track.
It wasn't until August that
Da Hoss was able to begin breezing. It was only three months to the Breeders'
Cup. But the breezes continued on a regular basis. He just might make it after
all. On Sept. 15, Dickinson
faxed the Prestons:
"Da Hoss breezed quite well
on Saturday. He has now had seven
breezes and probably will require three more...I feel he's moving as well as he
did when he won the Breeders' Cup or maybe even better. He remains as
competitive as ever...We all know that he does have aches and pains, and on a
nuclear scan he lights up like a Christmas tree...We're all holding our breath at
the moment, and it will indeed be a miracle if he wins the Breeders' Cup again
this year. But miracles do happen."
Those aches and pains Dickinson referred to would
flare up following every breeze and the horse would become stiff. Dickinson was afraid to
work Da Hoss long because of his fragility. To get the horse back in a
racetrack mode, he sent him to the Meadowlands, where Da Hoss breezed a slow
seven furlongs in 1:30. Between the tendon injury and all his other maladies, Dickinson had no way of
knowing how fit Da Hoss was. He only knew one thing: he needed to find a prep
race before the Breeders' Cup.
He had two races in mind, the
Cliff Hanger Stakes at the Meadowlands on Oct. 8 or an allowance race at Belmont two days later.
But rain that weekend washed out those plans, as Dickinson did not want to subject Da Hoss to
a soft grass course. And even if he wanted to run, there was a good chance both
races would be taken off the turf. The only alternative was to go straight into
the Breeders' Cup, but Da Hoss had no Breeders' Cup points and no wins. With so
many accomplished horses pointing the race, the selection committee was not
about to include a horse who had not raced for two years.
A Desperate Dickinson turned
to Lenny Hale, racing secretary at the new Colonial Downs in Virginia and asked him to write a race for
Da Hoss, which he gladly did, a nine-furlong allowance race on Oct. 11. The
race filled and remained on the turf. Da Hoss, after nearly two years, finally
made it back to the races. Sent off at 3-5 against five opponents, Da Hoss
stalked the early pace under Carlos Marquez Jr. and won by three-quarters of a
length.
On Oct. 21, Dickinson, after observing Da Hoss carefully
for 10 days, sent a final fax to the Prestons:
"I'm happy to say he came out
of his last race as good as we could have expected...Two weeks ago I felt we had
a 50-50 chance to make the Breeders' Cup. Now I think we have a 65% chance of
being there fit and well on that day."
After two breezes at Tapeta,
Da Hoss shipped to Churchill Downs. The Breeders' Cup was eight days away. But Dickinson realized that
training at Churchill and training at Tapeta were like night and day. At home,
Da Hoss was used to going out at the crack of dawn, but the grass course at
Churchill did not open until about 9 o'clock. So, for three hours, an anxious
Da Hoss had to remain in his stall, unable to train. Dickinson was not happy and was sorry he had
brought the horse so early.
Once on the track, Da Hoss
had to wait for others to train first, and Dickinson was worried about the horse having
to train over a course that had already been chewed up. When he worked him on
the Monday before the race, he realized to his dismay that his two-way radio
wasn't working and he was unable to convey instructions to Ferriday. Dickinson came upstairs
to the press box porch, where we watched the work together. I could tell he was
upset and distressed over the turn of events. After all the work he had put in
to get Da Hoss here, he was now in danger of having it all blow up a week before
the race. He had no way of communicating with Jon Boy and Da Hoss would have to
work over a less-than-ideal turf course.
His worries were for nothing.
Da Hoss glided over the course, breezing five furlongs in 1:03 1/5 and did it
in hand, striding out beautifully. Dickinson was thrilled with the way Da Hoss
went, but fearing he still wasn't 100% fit, he had Ferriday blow him out a bit
down the stretch on Thursday.
The night following the Monday
work, Dickinson,
for the time in weeks, slept through the night.
As he said, "It's been an
emotional roller coaster, especially the last six weeks. There were times he
was working so well I couldn't sleep with excitement. Then there were times
when things weren't going very well and I couldn't sleep with worry."
In 1996, Dickinson
had used Wakefield's
stiletto heels to measure the softness and depth of the course. This time, he
brought a penetrometer as well and was seen out on the course, walking it and
testing it on six different occasions, looking for the best ground. As he did
with Gary Stevens in ‘96, Dickinson
drew a map of the turf course, using different colors for the different paths, designating
where he wanted Da Hoss to be at each stage of the race. He brought the map to
the jock's room the morning of the race and showed it to jockey John Velazquez.
After the horses were
saddled, the Da Hoss team lost track of each other and dispersed in different
directions. Dickinson wound up in a small office
in the tunnel, Piedra and Ferriday found a place on the apron, and imagine my
surprise seeing Wakefield,
who took the wrong elevator, standing in front of a TV monitor in the press
box.
Of course, we all know what
happened after that. Velazquez, unable to follow Dickinson's directions, was forced to move early
on the far turn after getting bumped and having to check on the first turn.
Rallying four wide, Da Hoss, sent off at 11-1, hit the front at around the
three-sixteenths pole. This was too early, and Dickinson was upset, fearing the horse had
moved too soon. Da Hoss was on the lead with more than a furlong still to run.
From out of the pack came the
Neil Drysdale closer Hawksley Hill, who charged up alongside Da Hoss inside the
eighth pole and actually got his head, then neck in front at the sixteenth pole.
Da Hoss, with only one allowance race under him in two years, had made a
gallant effort, but he was a beaten horse. With no one in the 14-horse field
threatening from behind, it appeared obvious Da Hoss would settle for second, a
tremendous achievement in itself.
But then the improbable
happened. Da Hoss dug in and came battling back, his neck fully stretched. No
one could believe it. He could actually come back and win it. Da Hoss kept
reaching for more and with one final surge he stuck his head in front right
before the wire. A stunned Tom Durkin, calling the race, bellowed: "Oh, my! This
is the greatest comeback since Lazarus!" NBC host Tom Hammond was just as
excited and surprised. "We said Michael Dickinson was a mad genius," he stated.
"How in the world can they have this horse ready with one race in two years to
come back and win his second Breeders' Cup?"
A head-on photo of the finish
shows the dogged determination of Da Hoss as he crosses the finish line with
his teeth tightly clenched. Da comeback was complete.
Dickinson stood on the track as if in a daze, trying, but not
succeeding, to hold back the tears. Wakefield
rushed down from the press box and she and Dickinson embraced, both now weeping
uncontrollably. Nearby, Ferriday could barely get a word out and had to walk
off by himself to regain his composure.
"I can't believe it," a
teary-eyed Ferriday said. "I can't believe he's done it. He's a machine.
Michael, Joan, and Miguel deserve all the credit. I'm just a passenger on him."
With all the pandemonium
arround them, all four had to be thinking back to a much quieter time and place
at Tapeta Farm where the miracle of Da Hoss' fairy-tale comeback was born. All
the frustrations, sleepless nights, and feelings of hopelessness they endured
had erupted into one euphoric and emotional moment that will be forever frozen
in time in Breeders' Cup history.
Sir Michael Stoute, trainer
of also-ran Among Men, walked up to Dickinson,
patted him on the back, and said it all with one word: "Maestro."
Dickinson later reflected back to when it seemed all the work would
prove fruitless: "I remember saying to everyone after he was so stiff this fall
that we're going to have to stop on him; we can't carry on. There were a lot of
tears. Miguel has four children and he was crying. Joan was crying. Jon Boy was
crying."
Two months later, in the
Churchill Downs winner's circle, they all were crying once again.
For more information on Da Hoss, you may be interested in the following video features: Da Hoss and Michael Dickinson and Da Hoss at the Kentucky Horse Park.
