COMMENTARY : Lite the Fuse Can Re-Light Trainer’s Career in Dash Today

Dick Dutrow used to operate one of the most powerful stables that Maryland has ever seen, but he abandoned it for the chance to train higher-class horses in New York. He got his wish, sort of. When he returns to Laurel (Md.) Race Course today, he will be saddling one of the nation’s best sprinters, Lite the Fuse, for the $300,000 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash.

Yet Dutrow’s visit hardly marks the return of a conquering hero. During the decade he has spent in New York, the size and importance of his stable has steadily withered. With a mere 13 horses in his barn -- and only a single good one -- Dutrow is no longer a significant force in the sport. Saturday he will surely feel a twinge of nostalgia for the good old days when his 100-horse operation was an unstoppable juggernaut. The thought of returning to Maryland permanently has already crossed his mind.

Throughout the 1970s, Dutrow, Bud Delp and King Leatherbury were the dominant “big three” of Maryland trainers, but even his archrivals respected Dutrow as a consummate horseman. Nobody was better at caring for classy, old horses plagued by physical problems. Every young groom with aspirations to be a trainer sought to work for Dutrow and learn from him.

“He was unbelievably conscientious,” said trainer Lee Couchenour, one of the grooms who was a graduate of Dutrow U. “He was at the barn at 5:30 every morning; he got into the stall and felt every horse’s legs every day. He’d be saying, ‘X-ray this! Poultice this! Ice that!’ And it got done. You wanted to do everything perfectly for him.”

When Dutrow moved to New York in 1984, most Marylanders expected him to be a blazing success. He did have some triumphs -- most notably with the tough old gelding King’s Swan, who earned nearly $2 million -- but he never was a dominant force. He didn’t play the claiming game as astutely as some of his tough rivals. He wasn’t as effective training young horses as he was with the old campaigners. But perhaps Dutrow’s worst error was in his timing. The thoroughbred business began to decline in the mid-1980s; deteriorating economic conditions and changes in tax laws drove many owners out of the game.

“When I was in Maryland, I had owners who gave me money to work with -- and that’s what you need,” Dutrow said. Without such owners in New York, he had a rude awakening: “Anybody who thinks they’re something special in the business finds out you can’t do it without support.”

Dutrow’s fortunes declined so sharply by last summer that I was stunned, when I interviewed him at Saratoga, by the change in his usual cocky, self-assured demeanor. “Nobody wants me any more,” he lamented. “I guess I’m an antique.”

His only bright spot was a colt he had bred and owned by himself. Lite the Fuse had displayed brilliant speed in all of his training, and Dutrow knew he had great potential. He planned to showcase the horse as effectively as possible in order to sell him. With his fortunes at such a low ebb, he preferred a safe return to the risks of campaigning the 3-year-old.

Lite the Fuse won the first three races of his career in dazzling fashion, running six furlongs in 1:09 2/5, 1:09 4/5 and 1:08 3/5. Dutrow spurned bids as high as $600,000, until he got the one he wanted: a seven-figure offer that was contingent on Lite the Fuse’s winning his fourth start, the Boojum Handicap at Aqueduct. The prospective owners wanted to use that race as a springboard to the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

With $1 million on the line, Dutrow watched Lite the Fuse deliver the only disappointing effort of his life, finishing third as the favorite. Yet the loss might have turned out to be luckier than the trainer could have imagined at the time. Given a rest over the winter, Lite the Fuse has been better than ever. He scored a Grade I victory in the seven-furlong Carter Handicap at Belmont. He finished second in the one-mile Metropolitan Handicap, one of the country’s most important races for future stallion prospects. Then he returned to his best distance, six furlongs, and demolished his competition in the Tom Fool Handicap. He will be the solid favorite Saturday at Laurel, where a victory could push his career earnings above $480,000.

Dutrow has his sights firmly set on his principal objective, the Breeders’ Cup. Lite the Fuse isn’t nominated, and his entry fee would be $120,000, but Dutrow has already weighed the risks and rewards: “If he wins that race and he’s the champion sprinter, what would he be worth? Two million? Two and a half million?”

But Lite the Fuse has more than monetary value to Dutrow. The speedster has returned him, temporarily, to the upper echelon of the game, and restored a bit of his old self-confidence: “If I get a good horse, I can train him.” Still, he knows that Lite the Fuse’s success is almost certainly a one-shot phenomenon, for he hasn’t gained the support of any formidable owners likely to provide him with other top-class horses.

“When I went to New York,” Dutrow said, “I told myself: ‘I might get killed here, but I’m not going to die here.’ ” Recognizing that his career is indeed dying in New York, he has considered a return to Maryland. “If I came back, in my opinion, I’d have 40 horses in a year or two,” Dutrow predicted.

Unfortunately, the economic factors that have affected horse ownership in New York apply in Maryland, too. Plenty of well-regarded trainers at Laurel have seen their business dwindle. Dutrow may be able to come back home to capture a $300,000 race, but it won’t be easy for him to recapture all the glories of the past.