TAPIT'S TRAINING ANYTHING BUT BASIC.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI Horse Racing 

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - For Michael Dickinson's colt Tapit, the question is not whether he can handle the 1 1/4-mile distance of Saturday's Kentucky Derby, the crowding of a 20-horse field and the shouts of 140,000 fans. It's whether he can stand the hotel.

Going from the serene luxury of the Maryland farm where Dickinson trains his horses to a brick-and-wood Churchill Downs barn this week, Tapit must feel like Shaquille O'Neal checking into a roadside Econolodge.

``A lot of stalls at racetracks are built rather like prison cells - they're dark, small and have one tiny window,'' Dickinson said in a clipped Yorkshire accent. ``We try to make our stalls like hotel rooms. (At the farm) he has two windows, and he loves his (back) window. He looks out and watches things, and it relaxes him.''

That Dickinson trains at a 200-acre Tapeta Farm near Chesapeake Bay, Md., rather than on the crowded grounds of a racetrack, is what sets the 54-year-old Englishman apart from his American rivals and makes Wood Memorial winner Tapit the most intriguing of several contenders preparing for the 130th Kentucky Derby in unorthodox ways.

But some of the advantages of home have come to Churchill Downs with the gray-coated 3-year-old who is the 8-1 fourth choice on the Derby morning line behind The Cliff's Edge and Smarty Jones.

Dickinson has brought along a strip of scientifically blended grass, upon which Tapit grazed enthusiastically Thursday morning outside barn 17, a couple hundred yards from the Churchill half-mile pole.

He has brought along a supply of the Guinness ale and eggs that he mixes into his horses' oats for flavor and health benefits.

And he has brought along a pair of electronic air purifiers for the stall, presumably in case the last guest was a smoker.

Ordinarily, people would call a racehorse trainer like this crazy. Since Dickinson is a consistent winner - famous for saddling the first five finishers in England's Cheltenham Gold Cup steeplechase in 1983 and getting Da Hoss to win the Breeders' Cup Mile in 1998 two starts out of a nearly two-year layoff - they call him The Mad Genius.

``He's quite a character,'' said Richard Mandella, the Hall of Fame trainer of Action This Day and Minister Eric. ``He's a real thinker.''

On Thursday, shortly after dawn on Tapit's first full day at Churchill, Dickinson stood under an old elm, heels together and hands clasped behind his back, and discussed thoroughbred training theories that to the ears of staid Kentuckians sounded like the beginning of the undoing of the American revolution.

Especially the part about the Guinness Stout, one bottle of which is emptied into Tapit's feed at precisely 5 p.m. as ``an appetizer.''

Dickinson swiped the idea from his mentor Vincent O'Brien, the great Irish trainer.

``Most people like milk with their cereal to damp it. We damp it with Guinness,'' Dickinson said. ``In England, if you have anemia, you can get Guinness free on the National Health Service. It has therapeutic value.''

No worry is too small for Dickinson, who, along with his girlfriend and training partner Joan Wakefield, built Tapeta Farm with both turf and all-weather composite running surfaces that include uphill gallops for stamina building.

Son of a trainer, Dickinson launched his racing career as a steeplechase jockey, riding five Cheltenham Festival winners, before becoming a trainer himself, moving to the United States in 1987.

``My father loved horses,'' said Dickinson, who wears rimless glasses under salt-and-pepper bangs. ``He said, 'They can't speak, so you have to look after them.' A horse can't run to the store and buy a Coke, so you have to be sensitive to their needs.

``I just want what's best for the horse,'' he said. ``I want to make life better for him. I want to reward the effort he gives me on the racetrack. ... These are my children.''

Tapit's victory under jockey Ramon Dominguez in Aqueduct's Wood Memorial, by one-half length over Master David after a 10-length rally, was a supreme effort just as the son of Pulpit and Tap Your Heels was recovering from the lung infection blamed for his sixth-place finish in the Florida Derby.

It was the third victory in four starts for the colt - owned by donut-empire heir Ronald Winchell - who stamped his Derby potential with a romp in the Laurel Futurity last November.

Tapit is popular with a lot of sharp handicappers. They know this is Dickinson's first Derby starter. They figure, after waiting so long, he must be serious.

But Dickinson's detail work hasn't protected Tapit from two scourges of young thoroughbreds, the shin problem that sidelined him until March and the lung infection that followed. So now Dickinson must try to make Tapit the first horse to win the Derby in only his fifth start since Exterminator in 1918. To orthodox horseplayers, that hurdle is elevated by the fact Tapit's Wednesday arrival prevents in a formal workout on the Derby track.

--Dickinson's major worries: Tapit appeared to be looking around in the Wood homestretch - checking out the crowd? - a quirk the trainer said could cost him a victory if repeated in the Derby. And the rain forecast for Saturday could confront Tapit with his first muddy track.

``We don't have 'off' tracks at Tapeta,'' Dickinson pointed out.

If Dickinson can get around all of those obstacles, he'll have the ultimate vindication for his methods.

If Tapit can win the Kentucky Derby, he'll get the nicest reward a horse can receive.

He'll go home from his Churchill Downs motel to Tapeta Farms' four-star elegance.

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Photo:

(color) After being trained at a serene farm in Maryland, Kentucky Derby contender Tapit might have trouble adjusting to the conditions at Churchill Downs.

Daniel P. Derella/Associated Press

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