Our series continues with the remarkable story of the dual Breeders’ Cup Mile winner who was nursed back to full fitness by the ‘mad genius’ Michael Dickinson and his devoted team
Horse opera is what old-time TV westerns used to be called. They were cranked out by the dozens, one looking pretty much the same as the other. But real opera is something else again, rife with the agony and ecstasy of exotic drama, wrapped in soaring arias and heroic symphony.
Da Hoss was a horse who belonged in an opera.
How else could he be described? In Act I he is the abandoned waif scooped up by working-class benefactors who nurture him as he grows into a young prodigy deserving of a grander stage.
In Act II he gets that chance, adopted by wealthy patrons and given over to a masterful tutor who takes his student to great heights, though at considerable cost. Finally, in Act III, the master and his aging virtuoso emerge from their self-imposed exile to captivate a global audience with a performance of rare perfection.
Then the fat lady sings.
Even today, more than a quarter of a century since Da Hoss brought the 1998 Breeders’ Cup to its knees, the moment is fixed among racing’s greatest achievements. Likewise, the players in the Da Hoss story remain vivid, led by Pam and Kevin Eikleberry, Michael Dickinson and Joan Wakefield, and the Preston brothers of Prestonwood Farm – J.R., Jack and Art – as well as that man with the magical hands, Miguel Piedra.
In the 41 years of the Breeders’ Cup, there have been 28 multiple race winners, including the three-timers Goldikova and Beholder. But nobody did it like Da Hoss.
He won the Breeders’ Cup Mile in 1996 at Woodbine –the only time the event has left the US – with a letter-perfect victory over top European miler Spinning World.
Heart-pounding triumph
That French-trained colt won the Mile the following year at Hollywood Park, while Da Hoss languished on Michael Dickinson’s Maryland farm, injured and all but forgotten. Then, in 1998, Da Hoss returned with a simple prep race followed by a heart-pounding triumph in the Mile at Churchill Downs, inspiring a breathless Tom Durkin to call it “the greatest comeback since Lazarus”.
The overture begins in the winter of 1991, when the nine-year-old Irish mare Jolly Saint was presented to the eight-year-old stallion Gone West at Mill Ridge Farm in Lexington. Jolly Saint, a daughter of British champion Busted, had been good enough as a racehorse to win the 1984 Park Stakes in Ireland, then 11 months later she took the Boiling Springs Handicap at Meadowlands in New Jersey. As for Gone West, a son of Mr. Prospector out of a Secretariat mare, his first crop was just turning two, marking the first wave of what was to become an exemplary stallion career represented by 101 stakes winners.
In November 1991, Jolly Saint was purchased by Isaam Fares of Fares Farm, also located in Lexington, for $80,000. Her Gone West foal arrived on Jan. 18, 1992. Fares was a market breeder, and as such targeted a Keeneland sale for the son of Jolly Saint.
Come that September, Kevin Eikleberry, a third-generation trainer from Arizona, had just wrapped up the meet at Arapahoe Park in Aurora, Colorado. His next stop would be Albuquerque, New Mexico, but first there was shopping to do at the Keeneland preferred sale. It did not take long for the Gone West colt in the Fares Farm consignment to catch his eye.
“He’d been withdrawn from the summer sale because he’d had a gravel come through his foot,” Eikleberry said. “They had to surgically removed it, so he had to recover from that.
“The main thing I liked about him was being by Gone West,” Eikleberry went on. “He was a real balanced horse, although not what I’d call real correct. But with his conformation, I knew that the way I trained I could get him to the races and make it work.”
Da Hoss entered the ring near the end of the marathon first sale session on Sept. 13, 1993.
“At that time, the bottom bid was supposed to be $5,000, but they gave permission to drop it,” Eikleberry said. “Nobody bid five, so I bid four. Then somebody bid five, and I bid six and got him.
Da Hoss was one of 175 colts sold at that first session for an average price $90,686. “I always wondered if whoever bid $5,000 and stopped knew what he turned out to be,” Eikleberry said.
Healthy hoof
So it was off to Arizona for the Kentucky-bred, where Da Hoss spent the next several months growing a healthy new hoof. Once he started to breeze, Eikleberry was duly impressed.
“The first time I worked him, he showed nothing but class,” the trainer said. “We were sitting around the table, talking about how this colt could be the big horse. It was Rhet, our middle son, who said, ‘Well then, why not call him Da Hoss?’”
A sore shin delayed an early start as a two-year-old, but Eikleberry took the newly christened Da Hoss to Hollywood Park anyway to get ready for a debut at Del Mar. He stabled with the horses trained by Randy Bradshaw, a former Wayne Lukas assistant who was happy to offer a workmate for Eikleberry’s unstarted juvenile.
“But the only thing he had that day was a three-year-old who’d just won an allowance race,” Eikleberry said. “That was okay. I told him we’d stay with his horse as long as we could and then his horse could just go on.”
The scene remains vivid. Eikleberry and Bradshaw were on their ponies at the outside rail as the team came through the stretch.
“When they got to the eighth pole, it was Da Hoss that went on,” Eikleberry said. “Randy figured his horse must have bled. Later we’re cooling out and here comes Randy. ‘What is that? Is he for sale?’ I said, ‘I guess your horse didn’t bleed.’”
Eikleberry gelded Da Hoss and gave him a bit more time before unveiling him in a maiden race at Turf Paradise on Sept. 24. He won by an efficient length going 5½ furlongs, then came back in 24 days to win a six-furlong allowance race by three.
Twelve days later, Da Hoss left a large field in the desert dust to win the ArizonaThoroughbred Breeders Association Sales Stakes by 10 lengths in an astounding 1:07.20, hailed as the fastest six furlongs ever run by a two-year-old in North America.
“I was grooming him at the time, and I had him at the test barn after that race,” said Pam Eikleberry. “I could not walk him. He was literally dragging me around that shed row. I had them page Kevin, and of course his heart dropped. The last thing a trainer wants to hear is an announcement like that. But I needed help!”
News of the whirlwind two-year-old at Turf Paradise quickly spread. “When we got home, there was 32 messages on our answering machine,” Kevin Eikleberry said. “I didn’t want to sell him. Hated to lose him. But Prestonwood came with their offer, and our partner, Wall Street Racing, wanted to sell, although they did keep 15 per cent.”
Enter the ‘mad genius’
The Prestons had a reputation for beefing up their racing stable with talent scouted far and wide. Michael Dickinson, their trainer in the East, welcomed not only the young Da Hoss into the fold that winter, but also Tyson’s Revenge, a son of Trapp Mountain who was narrowly beaten in a very fast Hollywood Park maiden race by Afternoon Deelites, who went on to take the Hollywood Futurity.
“Tyson’s Revenge was supposed to be the better of the two, but Joan knew,” Dickinson said. “She watched Da Hoss on the track and said, ‘He’s the one. Don’t let him go.’”
Joan Wakefield, Dickinson’s training partner and future wife, was devoted to Da Hoss. “If it ever came to a competition between me and Da Hoss, I’d have lost every time,” Dickinson said.
Da Hoss made his debut for Prestonwood and Dickinson on March 4, 1995, in the Best Turn Stakes at Aqueduct, at six furlongs on the inner track. He won by three. Encouraged, they tossed him into the Gotham Stakes there at a mile and ran squarely into the Canadian champion Talkin Man. Da Hoss finished seven lengths back but was best of the rest.
“He was too aggressive,” Dickinson recalled. “He needed to relax, which is why I ran him next on the grass.”
The allowance race score on turf at Garden State opened all manner of possibilities. Da Hoss went back to the dirt to finish second in the Illinois Derby at Sportsman’s Park, won the Jersey Derby on the grass at Garden State, then ran second to Kentucky Derby winner Thunder Gulch in the Swaps Stakes at Hollywood Park, taking him deep into the stretch before losing by only two lengths.
It was a hot day in Inglewood for the Swaps, and Da Hoss suffered from heat stoke after the race, requiring help to return to the barn. He even got loose briefly, in his distress, but was corralled without harm.
Dickinson prescribed a break for his horse at his stables in Camden, South Carolina. Refreshed, Da Hoss returned to California to win the Del Mar Derby on the grass, then did as best he could on a sloppy Meadowlands track to be second in the Pegasus Handicap.
By then, Da Hoss was revealing a pattern of rock-ribbed consistency which lasted to the end of his career. He won 12 races in 20 starts at 13 racetracks, all but those first three for Dickinson.
The trainer, a Brit from Yorkshire, was dubbed variously as a maverick, iconoclast, and mad genius, which he self-deprecatingly conceded was at least half-right. Above all, Dickinson was a notorious tactician who would plan ahead and then turn on a dime.
Musical jockeys
This, of course, would give jockey agents fits. Da Hoss had 13 different riders in those 17 races for Dickinson, seven of them either in the Hall of Fame or on the way.
Clearly, the game of musical jockeys mattered little to Da Hoss. On his way to $1.9 million in earnings, he was worse than third only once, and that was in the 1995 Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Belmont Park, when Dickinson called an audible.
“He was intended for the Mile, but it had been raining,” Dickinson said. “I walked the course the Monday before the race. It was quite soft, and with more rain in the forecast it wasn’t going to get any better. When the main track came up sloppy on raceday, he lost all chance.”
After that, Da Hoss had just enough left in his young tank for a third cross-country trip to California for the Hollywood Derby and a third-placed finish to Labeeb. Dickinson then put him away for the winter, content in the knowledge that the best was yet to come.
Working backwards from the 1996 Breeders’ Cup Mile in late October, Dickinson had Da Hoss ready to roll in July for the Poker Handicap at Belmont Park. He made the lead, then was passed to finish third in a 1:33-and-change mile.
The race set the table for the Fourstardave Handicap at Saratoga, a G1 mile named for the local hero who made 100 starts, nine of them victorious performances at Saratoga. With John Velazquez aboard, Da Hoss cruised to a 1¼-length victory over favored Green Means Go. Two weeks later, Dickinson sent Da Hoss to Penn National to make quick work of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Cup Handicap at odds-on.
For all his success, the medical record of Da Hoss also was becoming part of his legend, from that early hoof to bone spurs, shins, and soft tissue. His march to the 1996 Breeders’ Cup had its moments.
“It’s not a matter of being patient,” Dickinson said. “When a horse needs a bit of time, you can only wait until you can go on with them again. Fortunately, we were able to get in enough work and a race to get him to the Breeders’ Cup.”
That race was the Kelso Handicap at Belmont Park, three weeks before the Cup. Gary Stevens was coming from California for several Belmont stakes already that weekend, so Dickinson snapped him up for the Kelso and was encouraged by their close second to longshot Same Old Wish.
Get to the fence
For the next two weeks, Dickinson trained Da Hoss with kid gloves. Once settled into their Canadian digs, the trainer walked Woodbine’s elegant grass course to test the various lanes of attack. The message to Stevens: get to the fence.
“We found the path as Michael laid it out, and Da Hoss took me everywhere I needed to go,” Stevens said. “After the time he lost, Michael did an amazing job of having him ready for this.”
Da Hoss had earned another South Carolina holiday, only this time there was no immediate return. “He started in training and then got hurt,” Dickinson said, referring to the tendon injury that could have spelled the end of the line.
Nothing takes more time to heal than a tendon, if it heals at all. Da Hoss went back to Dickinson’s Maryland farm and let nature take its course.
“He loved being out in his field every day with his friend ‘Boomer’,” Dickinson said, referring to Business Is Boomin, another rehab project. “They were best of buddies, and they loved it when it rained, because they used to roll, one after the other. They’d come in covered with mud, really pleased with themselves.”
The playtime supplemented the exercise Da Hoss eventually received over hill and dale of the Dickinson farm, with its variety of turf gallops and the earliest version of what was to become the revolutionary Tapeta synthetic surface material.
But it was Miguel Piedra, a longtime Dickinson aide, whose hands massaged and caressed every inch of the gelding’s battle-worn body, able to alert the boss at the slightest pimple or hair out of place. By early 1998, the gelding was making progress.
Magic hands
“Two vets looked at him that spring,” Dickinson said. “I told them of my plan for two races. They both said there’s no way you’d make the first race, let alone the second. But Miguel said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get him there.’ And he got him there. That’s why I called him the man with the magic hands.”
As the comeback approached, Dickinson was battling a rainy early autumn. He dismissed prep races at Belmont and the Meadowlands due to weather before finding a $30,000 allowance race at nine furlongs on grass at Colonial Downs, a new Virginia track in the countryside east of Richmond. The date was Oct. 11, 1998. It had been 715 days since Da Hoss had raced.
“It wasn’t for fitness,” Dickinson said. “I knew we could get him fit at home training up the hills. So the race was for practice, to knock off the ring-rustiness.”
Da Hoss had to concentrate long enough to handle the seven-year-old John’s Call, trained by Tom Voss. John’s Call soldiered on to win a pair of G1 stakes in New York at age nine.
Churchill Downs welcomed a full gate of 14 for the 1998 Breeders’ Cup Mile on Nov. 7. The choices were the one-time wunderkind Favorite Trick, who’d won a major stakes at Keeneland, and Desert Prince, an Irish Guineas winner who’d just beaten his elders in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot. Da Hoss was held at 11-1, which appeared to be wishful thinking to all but the most devoted Dickinson followers.
In the end, all the injures, the rehab, and the time away from racing meant nothing to Da Hoss. When the gate opened, and the 14 horses spilled into their long ranks approaching the first turn, Da Hoss gave John Velazquez every ounce of the same, grit first recognized by the Eikleberrys in Arizona. Velazquez secured an ideal spot along the inside hedge for more than half a mile before quietly angling outward for a clear run on the turn for home.
Da Hoss struck briefly to the front – much to announcer Durkin’s surprise – but then appeared to be headed and passed by the erratic though talented Hawksley Hill, who had closed from last.
Unfolding miracle
There would have been no shame in finishing second, but that is not how Da Hoss played the game. Any advantage Hawksley Hill claimed began to dribble away, inch by inch, as the wire approached. The crowd was frantic at the sight of the unfolding miracle. When the photo of the finish was posted, it was Da Hoss by the length of his determined head.
In the winner’s circle afterwards, Dickinson gave credit to Piedra for his hours of work with Da Hoss and called the experience “the most emotional day of my life”. This was the guy, bear in mind, who trained the first five finishers of the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup – a feat known as the ‘Famous Five’ and heralded by Racing Post readers as the greatest training performance of the 20th century – while handling jumpers in his native England.
Da Hoss went back to the farm, where Dickinson and Piedra tried for one more comeback. This time, the magic fizzled, and the noble warrior was retired. The Kentucky Horse Park welcomed Da Hoss with open arms, where he became a stellar attraction alongside such Thoroughbred legends as John Henry and Cigar. Among the regular visitors were Pam and Kevin Eikleberry.
“I always made a point to go see him when I went back for a sale,” Kevin said. “We got to see him just before he died.”
That day came on Jan. 2, 2022, at the Horse Park. His remains were buried alongside those of Forego, Cigar, John Henry, Bold Forbes and other greats who graced the Horse Park Hall of Champions.
“We were so fortunate to see him about a month before,” said Pam. “He came right up to us and started looking in my pocket for candy, like he knew who I was.
“We were grateful we had him for a while, but I’ll admit it hurt when we lost him,” she added. “I still haven’t gotten over it. He was a horse you’d never forget.”
• Visit the Michael Dickinson website and the Breeders’ Cup website
• Read all Jay Hovdey's features in his Favorite Racehorses series
Well Armed: ‘This horse, what he’s meant to us in so many ways, it’s impossible to describe’
Hollywood Wildcat: ‘She made my job easy’ – Eddie Delahoussaye
View the latest TRC Global Rankings for horses / jockeys / trainers / sires