Hide Article Text (OCR)
Dutrow is home to stayThe last time Dick Dutrow was a Marytttnd baaed trainer he had 45 horses in his barn at Laurel. And he had 45 horses in his other barn at Bowie. And it seemed, for a number of years, that they were all winners.When Dickie saddled the cheap filly Tor's Baby to win his 330th race of 1975, topping Jack Van Berg's North American record, there were 2$ days left in the year. Dutrow saddled 22 more winners. The next year Van Berg put the record out of sight, at 496, but to do it he had to start 2,362 horses, 800 more than anybody had ever saddled.Dickie Dutrow is back in Maryland, to stay. He has nine horses in Barn 5 at Laurel. At least two of them are winners and he has a particularly promising 2-year-old for the Marathon Farm of Orioles owner Peter Angelos. Dickie would like to have about 30 runners and show a profit for all his owners, as he was doing when he left for New York in 1984.And Richard Eugene Dutrow, now a burgher on four acres off 108, in Howard County, would be making money again. But that would not be his motivation, or his inspiration, any more than it was as he was being congratulated for his 352nd winner of 1975.“I’ve left them something to shoot at, Dickie told Dale Austin of the Baltimore Sun. “I’ve got so I hate to lose. I want to be the leader. 1 don’t want them (rival trainers) putting anything past me.”And a few days ago, after he had really arrived back in Maryland with Romano Gucci's overwhelming victory in the $54,475 Hoover Stakes, 59-year-old Dickie Dutrow said this: “It’s the thrill of being there.”The thrill of being there has never been more vividly demonstrated, or exemplified, than by Dutrow in the Laurel winner’s circle after the 1995 victory in the $300,000 De Francis Dash by Lite The Fuse, a colt Dickie bred,HORSE RACINGBy JACK MANNtrained, adored and spoiled. Lite The Fuse is a son of Annie's Dream, a mare Dutrow bred, trained, adored and spoiled in the early ’80s.But there was a deeper reason Dutrow yipped and yelped in that winner’s circle, bigh-fiving himself and almost break-dancing in glee. What he was feeling was relief and release, from the depression that had gripped him at his emptying bam at Aqueduct The kid who dropped out of the 10th grade in Hagerstown to muck stalls at Charles Town had been successful, but never comfortable, in a decade at the Big A. And the hundred-horse guy was down to a dozen just horses.In 1987, with Alvin Akman’s stakes-winning claimer, King's Swan, Dutrow was third in New York with 84 victories; as late as ’90 he won 47. “But I switched from elaimers to breeders, he said, “and I wasn’t good enough. Or lucky enough.”Lite The Fuse made Dickie feel good enough again, winning the De Francis again last year. And he felt quite sufficient a year ago as Herb and Arlene Kushner's Maryland homebred Romano Gucci, at 16 to 1, won Aqueduct’s Grade-3Best Turn in a stylish 1:10)4 over a track that was just “good.”Romano Guci’s pedigree dearly declares “sprint,” but after the dark gelding carried Julie Krone to victory in the Grade-2 Gotham Mile in 1:34ft he was in that classic situation: he was 3, he could run, and there was a Kentucky Derby five weeks away. It was time, whether it was the right time or not, to “get to the bottom of him.”That happened at about the three-eighths pole of the nine-furlong Wood Memorial, Dutrow figures, when that “very special horse,” Unbridled's Song, began to move after pressing the moderate pace. If he didn't come to us until the quarter pole,” Dickie says, “We’d have been second. No w*y we would have won ”No way they would try Romano Gucci at more than a mile again. He had passed the gut check, persevering to be third. But his limit was set. “We were going to try the Withers (a mile at Belmont on May 11) and see if we could make the Freak-ness, Dutrow said.“But he didn’t eat up (finish his food), and he had a temperature. It kept coming back, up to 104, and we couldn't get It down without antfbi-otics.“Finally,” Dutrow said, “I told Herb (owner Kushner) we’d be behind schedule running into tough experienced 3-year-olds, or 4-year-olds, so why not give him the year off, do it right.”.Romano Gucci ran dismally in the Gravesend at Aqueduct Dec. 26 but Dickie figures he knows wy. “There was some mucus and a little blood after the Wood,” he said, “so we tried Lasix. Evidently it wasn’t what he needed. It wasn’t good for him.Without Lasix Ramono Gucci won the Hoover like a thief in the night, by four and a half lengths. “It wasn’t competition for him,” Dutrow said. There will be in the General George/-That’s seven eighths of a mile at Laurel on Feb. 17, for $200,000. Romano Gucci just might be the favorite. Dickie Dutrow is home, to stay.
Newspaper Details
Annapolis Sunday Capital
Annapolis, Maryland, US
Sun, Feb 09, 1997
Page 61
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
MD, USA 29 Apr 2024
Other Publications Near Annapolis, Maryland
Capital Gazette
Annapolis Maryland Republican And State Capital Advertiser
Annapolis Maryland Republican
Annapolis Capital Gazette
Maryland Gazette
