November 2018 Member of the Month: Donald R. Dizney

Donald R. Dizney is the TOBA November Member of the Month

Thirty-five years after entering the Thoroughbred business, Donald R. Dizney is still breeding and racing top-flight runners in his native Florida. Most recently, Dizney, founder and chairman of Orlando-based United Medical Corporation, bred multiple graded stakes winner Skye Diamonds. The mare is a daughter of his homebred grade 1 winner First Dude, who stands at his owner’s Double Diamond Farm near Ocala.

Born in Pensacola, Dizney fell in love with horses and the Bluegrass State while attending Eastern Kentucky University. Decades later, Dizney and wife Irene—now full-time residents of Palm Beach, Florida—are generous donors to his alma mater, as well as to multiple programs at the University of Florida.

“I bought my first Thoroughbred in approximately 1983,” Dizney remembered, adding jovially, “I was like most of the beginners in this business. My horse couldn’t beat me and you.” He said, “What kept me going? I had a horse farm [Double Diamond] and it’s like having a new house—you have to fill it up with furniture, I thought.”

Dizney’s equine accomplishments are many. He bred and co-owned millionaire Wekiva Springs, sold a $4.2 million Seattle Slew yearling colt in 2000, and received the FTBOA’s 2007 Bruce Campbell Award for his contributions to breeding and racing in the Sunshine State. A Jockey Club member, Dizney also held the presidency of the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders’ and Owners’ Association three times and served on the boards of Breeders’ Cup Limited and the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association.

Dizney claimed First Dude’s dam, the Smart Strike mare Run Sarah Run, at Churchill Downs because “she was beautifully-bred, and she was running and the fact was beating the horse I was running,” he quipped. He bred her to Stephen Got Even, a son of A.P. Indy, to produce First Dude. A strapping colt, First Dude “was big and fun to be around, so we liked him pretty well,” Dizney said. He added, “And every time we went [to the track], I thought we were going to win. He was just a big, old horse that had a huge stride. He’d take off and when he took off he’d run as far as he could. Sometimes he lasted; sometimes he didn’t.” In 2010 alone, First Dude hit the board in five grade 1 races, garnering a second in the Preakness Stakes (G1) and a third in the Belmont Stakes (G1).

At four, First Dude went to Bob Baffert on the West Coast and began to excel. In 2011, he won the Alysheba Stakes (G3), then crowned his career with a triumph in the Hollywood Gold Cup (G1) over Game on Dude. After pulling a ligament, he was retired to Double Diamond. “Making a stallion…is hard work,” Dizney observed, “because you really never know and you’re trying to find out how they made out and trying to get horses to him, and Florida’s a tough place to make it.”

Nevertheless, Dizney had kickstarted the careers of successful sires Runaway Groom and Northern Afleet before they were moved to Kentucky,and supported First Dude with some of his 40 mares. “It’s exciting and it’s really an accomplishment of our team at the farm,” he said, citing son-in-law Roger Brand, a vice president and general manager at Double Diamond, as a key influence.

“We were really nervous about First Dude because all of his races, his best races, were a mile-plus and so we thought that’d be—Florida loves speed horses—so we were a little concerned at first that we wouldn’t get the speed out of him,” Dizney said. He needn’t have worried; First Dude-sired Mom’s On Strike captured the 12-furlong Bewitch Stakes (G3T) in April, while his Madame Uno won the 1 1/16-mile Pleasant Acres Stallions Distaff Turf Stakes in March.

Florida’s leading sire by earnings in 2018, First Dude has three graded winners this year, highlighted by Skye Diamonds, whom Dizney bred in California. Claimed by her current owners in 2016, Skye Diamonds took the 2017 Great Lady M Stakes (G2) and Rancho Bernardo Handicap (G3). Most recently, the five-year-old mare annexed the October 4 L.A. Woman Stakes (G3) at Santa Anita. Skye Diamonds’ dam, Exonerated (by Johannesburg), has a First Dude weanling and is in foal to Candy Ride.

Dizney shares his Thoroughbred successes with Irene and their three children and ten grandchildren. “When you look back at it—my involvement that I’ve had with my family and these races and breeding horses, et cetera—has been the highlight for me. You’re right—it has been a bunch of highlights for me.” For family man Dizney, that makes the challenges of racing and breeding all worth it.