A Little Work Goes a Long Way for Tapit

Michael Dickinson, who has run 1-2-3-4-5 in one of England’s major jump races and won the Breeders’ Cup Mile twice with Da Hoss in the U.S., is now on the cusp of another extraordinary training accomplishment.

Dickinson saddled Tapit to win the $750,000 Wood Memorial before 17,354 on Saturday at Aqueduct. Next on May 1 is the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, where a lightly raced colt such as Tapit seldom succeeds, but with Dickinson you never know.

The Wood was Tapit’s third win in only four career starts, and came about a month after his only start this year, a sixth-place finish in the Florida Derby. The last horse to win the Kentucky Derby off only four total starts was Exterminator in 1918; and a horse with only two outs as a 3-year-old hasn’t won the Derby since Sunny’s Halo in 1983.

Dickinson said before the Florida Derby that he would have been happy with a third-place finish, and he would have been satisfied with a similar outcome here, because Tapit had trained only sporadically since he suffered a lung infection in the race at Gulfstream Park. His only workouts since the Florida Derby were a mile in 1:47 2/5 on Monday and a four-furlong grass breeze in :51 1/5 Thursday.

The British-born Dickinson, 54, trains his horses on his Tapeta Farm in Northern Maryland, where they work over a specially constructed running surface. Tapeta is the Latin word for carpet.

“If the Wood had been run last Saturday, we wouldn’t have been able to run,” Dickinson said. “Two weeks ago, one of the horse’s lungs was 100%, but the other one was 80%. Then last week, one lung was 100% and the other one was 99.9%. It takes 28 days for the lungs to develop a new lining. He is a very courageous horse. He wasn’t at his best today, and he is going to improve.”

Tapit, ridden by Ramon Dominguez, who led the country last year with 453 wins, was in ninth place after a half-mile and seventh through six furlongs, but they circled the field on the far turn. Swingforthefences was the leader with an eighth of a mile to run, and Master David also led briefly in the stretch, but Tapit overtook both of them in the final strides.

The winning margin was a half-length, with Master David nosing out Eddington for second place. Swingforthefences finished fourth, followed by Royal Assault, Value Plus, Little Matth Man, Cuba, Consecrate, Sinister G and Hornshope.

Earning $450,000 for his owners, Ron Winchell and his sister, Christina Harris, Tapit paid $12.60 as the fourth choice. His time of 1:49 3/5 for 1 1/8 miles was hardly fast, especially on a day when most other horses were flying. Pico Central, winner of the Carter Handicap, which was run just after the Wood, ran seven furlongs in 1:20 1/5, missing the track record by a fifth of a second. The Wood time was the slowest since 1996 and the second-slowest in the last 15 runnings.

“He did it very easily,” Dominguez said. “I was very pleased with the way he did things. From the quarter pole home, he picked it up very gradually and made me feel that he wasn’t all out by any means.”

Trainer Bobby Frankel said Master David, ridden by Alex Solis, would also go on to the Kentucky Derby. The Wood was the colt’s first start in two months.

“He just got a little tired,” Solis said of the Hollywood Park shipper. “He needed this race. This will set him up good for the next one.”

The father of Tapit’s owners was Verne Winchell, who was 87 when he died in November 2002, two months after he picked out the gray son of Pulpit and Tap Your Heels, an Unbridled mare, and bought him at a yearling auction for $625,000.

“I always went to the sales with my father,” Ron Winchell said. “Being here without him today causes a lot of impact.”