Michael W. Dickinson

Born to a family of horsemen in England, Michael Dickinson was an amateur champion jockey and a professional rider for a decade before turning his attention to training. He honed his craft under legendary Irish trainer Vincent O’Brien at Ballydoyle in Ireland before going out on his own.

In England, a pair of Dickinson’s training feats set new Guinness World Records: he trained a record 12 winners in a single day on Boxing Day (Dec. 26) in 1982 and Dickinson trained the first five finishers of the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup (won by Bregawn).

A member of the British Steeplechasing Hall of Fame, Dickinson came to the U.S. in 1987. His first stakes victory in the U.S. came with The Way It’s Been in the 1989 Goldfinch Stakes. The following year he picked up his first graded stakes victories when Seattle Dawn won the Grade 3 Snow Goose Handicap at Pimlico and the Grade 2 Delaware Handicap.

Dickinson is perhaps best known in the U.S. as the trainer of Da Hoss, who won the 1996 Breeders’ Cup Mile before ankle and tendon injuries sidelined him for nearly two full years. With only an allowance victory at Colonial Downs, Da Hoss entered the 1998 Breeders’ Cup Mile as almost an afterthought. Sent off at 11.60-1 odds, Da Hoss gamely outfinished Hawksley Hill to win by a head, producing one of the most memorable calls in racing history as announcer Tom Durkin dubbed the win, “the greatest comeback since Lazarus.”

Mark Simon of the Thoroughbred Times wrote:

“November 7, 1998 will be remembered as the day Michael Dickinson pulled off one of the great training feats in American racing history.”

The “mad genius” Michael Dickinson continued to train successfully in the U.S, winning Grade 1 races with Cetewayo, Fleet Renee, A Huevo, and Tapit, who would go on to become a multiple leading sire.

Dickinson’s commitment throughout his training career was always to the animal and he spared no expense in developing his Tapeta Farm in North East, Md., where he installed multiple turf courses to accommodate different weather and seasons, hills for training, state-of-the-art barn facilities with ventilation that includes six air changes per hour, and, of course, his own synthetic surface, Tapeta (Latin for carpet) Footings.

Dickinson retired from training in 2007 to focus on his Tapeta Footing surface but returned in 2016. He earned his first stakes win of the comeback with Minks Aprise in October 2016.

Tapeta Footings is the racing surface of the main track at Golden Gate Fields, Presque Isle Downs, and Woodbine.