TUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2015 732-747-8060 $ TDN Home Page Click Here AMERICAN PHAROAH SHIPS WEST American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile) left Monmouth Park Monday morning, a day after his dazzling victory in the GI William Hill Haskell Invitational, shipping back to the Del Mar base of trainer Bob Baffert. IT’S GOOD TO BE MARIA AHe came out of the race perfect,@ confirmed the Thinking of buying a filly at the colt=s regular exercise rider forthcoming yearling sales? Well, you could Jorge Alvarez. AHe wasn=t do worse than consider giving her a name even blowing or anything, containing Maria. During the current that was easy for him. decade we have seen Awesome Maria Yesterday was easy. He become a multiple graded winner, with the looks like he could go out GI Ogden Phipps H. among her successes; we=ve seen there and do it again Maria Royal take the today. He wasn=t even G2 Prix de Royallieu; and tired this morning. He we=ve seen the cleaned the tub and ate all American Pharoah | Sarah Andrew stakes-winning of his food.@ Stopshoppingmaria finish American Pharoah attracted plenty of attention at the second at Grade I and Jersey Shore last week, with throngs of fans lining up Grade II levels. There to watch him gallop in the mornings. have also been stakes AThat was fun,@ Alvarez said of the crowds. AI didn=t successes for My My My expect that. I=ve never seen anything like that before Maria, Heidi Maria and just to see a horse train.@ Exclusively Maria, plus Amazing Maria in full flight to win Alvarez said he thinks the Triple Crown winner has black-type performances the Rothschild | Scoop Dyga improved throughout his campaign. from Stopspendingmaria AThe only difference I=ve seen between the other and Maria Maria. races and this one is he=s a little more mature,@ he This year alone there have already been graded/group commented. ABefore he wanted to go too early, even in victories for three Marias. Lovely Maria succeeded in the mornings he wanted to do too much, now he=s adding the GI Kentucky Oaks to her victory in the getting a lot better at those things.@ GI Ashland S., and then, two days ago, Amazing Maria and Stopchargingmaria both added to their considerable achievements. Cont. p7 DICKINSON TO RETURN TO TRAINING by T.D. Thornton 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 AMad Genius@ is making a comeback to training racehorses. Sixty-five-year-old Michael W. Michael Dickinson | Dickinson--the former British Horsephotos 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. Cont. p3 The first two G1-winning colts by EMPIRE MAKER both stand at WinStar. PIONEEROF THE NILE Sire of 7 stakes winners to date including the incomparable AMERICAN PHAROAH Look for SELECT YEARLINGS selling at F-T Saratoga BODEMEISTER Brilliant G1 winner whose much-anticipated first yearlings sell this summer Office: (859) 873-1717 Dream Big. Breed . WinStarFar m.com Kyle Wilson: (859) 699-8589 | Caroline Walsh: (859) 537-2527 | Sean Tugel: (859) 940-0456 photos by: IN THIS ISSUE President & Co-Publisher: Barry Weisbord [email protected] @barryweisbord Sr. V.P. & Co-Publisher: Sue Finley [email protected] @suefinley V.P., International Operations: Gary King Court is Back in Session [email protected] @garykingTDN EDITORIAL Juddmonte homebred Courtier (Pioneerof the Nile) looks to [email protected] Editor-in-Chief: Jessica Martini resume his promising career in Friday’s GII National Museum Managing Editor: Alan Carasso of Racing Hall of Fame S. The colt has been off since finishing a Senior Editor: Steve Sherack valiant second in the Jan. 24 Kitten’s Joy S. "It's obviously his Racing Editor: Brian DiDonato first run back off a layoff, so I guess that would be the only Associate Editor: Justina Severni Associate Editor: Christie DeBernardis apprehension we'd have, but other than that, everything has Assistant Editor: Heather Anderson gone well with him," Juddmonte’s Garrett O'Rourke said. Courtier (right) | A Coglianese Assistant Editor: Ben Massam ADVERTISING Page 6 [email protected] Director of Advertising: Alycia Borer Art Director: Lia Kusch Lea Preps for Whitney Sr. Ad Coordinator/Dir. of Distribution: Sarah K. Andrew Advertising Designer: Amanda Crelin Lea (First Samurai), narrowly beaten in the GI Stephen Foster Advertising Assistant: Amanda Foster H. in his last trip to the post, tuned up for Saturday’s Social Media Strategist: Nichola Henry GI Whitney H. with a four-furlong move at Saratoga Monday. CUSTOMER SERVICE “He's still on track for the Whitney. That's the plan," reported [email protected] trainer Bill Mott. Dir. of Customer Service: Vicki Forbes Lea | Lauren King INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Page 7 Director of IT: Robert Williams [email protected] No Classic for Horn Director of Internal IT: Ray Villa [email protected] A day after American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile)’s win in WORLDWIDE INFORMATION the GI Haskell Invitational, Anthony Oppenheimer, owner- International Editor: Kelsey Riley breeder of European standout Golden Horn (GB) (Cape Cross [email protected] {Ire}) was quick to quash any talk of a match-up between the Newmarket Bureau, Cafe Racing: two sophomores in the GI Breeders’ Cup Classic. "It's a Anthony Oppenheimer with Sean Cronin & Tom Frary complete no-no, on dirt, certainly," Oppenheimer said. [email protected] Golden Horn | Racing Post Page 9 60 Broad Street, Suite 100 Red Bank, NJ 07701 732-747-8060 | 732-747-8955 (fax) www.thoroughbreddailynews.com www.thetdn.com EST Race Click for 3:00p EBF Give Thanks S.-G3, COR Brisnet.com PPS TDN P HEADLINE NEWS • 8/4/15 • PAGE 3 of 11 • thoroughbreddailynews.com 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 Dickinson to Return to Training (cont. from p1) surface, whose ever-evolving compositional recipe is An eight-year layoff should represent only a minor now in its 10th iteration. hurdle for the highly driven Dickinson. After all, this is a AI had no intention of going back to training,@ man whose unorthodox conditioning skills enabled the Dickinson told TDN in a Monday phone interview. ABut physically hobbled Da Hoss to during my time [away], I started all the time looking for win the GI Breeders= Cup Mile new [training] ideas. The last three years I=ve been in both 1996 and 1998 with trying those new ideas, but most of them failed. That=s only a single prep race in a fact of life, but we=ve found a few that do [work].@ between, prompting NBC Dickinson continued: AWhen I trained before, once we racecaller Tom Durkin to dub bought the farm, we won eight Grade I races. But I was the feat Athe greatest never really happy with the results. In fact, I wasn=t comeback since Lazarus.@ remotely happy. I felt we could have done better. So Dickinson will train I=m doing this to prove to myself that I can do better. Da Hoss | Horsephotos exclusively off his expansive That=s it. But I=m going to enjoy it, and I=m really looking 250-acre Tapeta Farm in the town of North East, forward to it. I=ve got the enthusiasm and energy of a Maryland. Nicknamed AChantilly of the Chesapeake,@ 22-year-old, and I=m fit and healthy.@ the centerpiece of the lush, grassy facility is Dickinson=s It=s not unusual for a Thoroughbred trainer to retire proprietary-formula synthetic training track that consists and come back. But what is refreshing about Dickinson is that he sets his bar extremely high for personal goals of Tapeta (Latin for Acarpet@) footing. Dickinson envisions between 20 and 30 horses will eventually be and has never been afraid to made drastic career changes, even if those switches have meant uprooting under his care as the sole trainer on the property, and himself and his family from a comfortable lifestyle to he will target the top levels of U.S. racing. satisfy his insatiable quest for new challenges. Cont. p4 TDN P HEADLINE NEWS • 8/4/15 • PAGE 4 of 11 • thoroughbreddailynews.com 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.