Diamond in the rough

Updated: April 6, 2008, 9:17 PM ET

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By Ray Paulick
Special to ESPN.com
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Wood Memorial

Tale of Ektai runs down War Pass in the final strides.Tags: Horseracing

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In just a few weeks, hundreds of men and women will be wandering around the stable area of Churchill Downs looking for background stories for the May 3 Kentucky Derby to send back home to their newspapers, or to Web sites or television stations.

Unlike other sports, where the players do most of the talking, racing's stars are silent, except for the occasional whinny or snort. Their trainers or owners do most of their talking for them.

For years, like the emperor penguins of Antarctica making their annual march to ancestral breeding grounds, the writers and broadcasters would beat a predictable path toward the barn of the one-time Derby king, D. Wayne Lukas, who sent out four winners of America's greatest race from his neatly manicured barn over a 12-year period, from 1988-1999. Then they'd shuffle past the free donuts and coffee in the media hospitality room to absorb� the wit and wisdom of Bob Baffert, whose remarkable Run for the Roses and the other Triple Crown races netted eight victories from 1997-2002.

It was an easy to way for a reporter to fill up a notebook or video tape. Both men had love affairs with the camera and enjoyed seeing their names in print. In what is becoming more the rule than the exception, however, neither Baffert nor Lukas appears armed with anything resembling a 2008 Derby contender. That means the media will have to come up with fresh material.

Fortunately, the results of the April 5 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct will supply some.

The Wood was to be an acid test for last year's 2-year-old champ, War Pass, who had a bummer of a trip for trainer Nick Zito in the Tampa Bay Derby last month, suffering not just his first defeat but a humbling last-place finish. The son of Cherokee Run passed the test in the Wood -- sort of -- leading from the outset while setting quick fractions but getting caught in deep stretch by Tale of Ekati, who came up the rail under Edgar Prado to win by a half-length, paying $19 for the upset.

Tale of Ekati, winner of last year's Futurity at Belmont but a well-beaten fourth behind War Pass in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Monmouth Park, had just one previous 2008 start, a dull sixth behind Pyro in the Louisiana Derby March 7. He is trained by Barclay Tagg, who won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness with Funny Cide in 2003. Tagg is the antithesis of Baffert and Lukas, someone who would rather let his horses do the talking for him -- which, of course, can be very frustrating for a reporter.

But Tale of Ekati's owner, Canadian Chuck Fipke, doesn't mind talking at all -- and he's got a lot to talk about.� He's a self-made man -- an Indiana Jones type of character-- who's led an adventurous life, mining for diamonds around the world and striking it rich in his native country's Northwest Territory with the discovery of the Ekati diamond mine in 1990. His amazing story is told in the book "Fire Into Ice:� Charles Fipke and the Great Diamond Hunt."

Apparently, diamonds really are a girl's best friend. The first time I saw Fipke -- nicknamed "Stumpy" by some of his employees -- was in 2002 in the paddock at Woodbine. He was escorting an attractive young lady whose legs were nearly as long as he is tall. Only a couple of years earlier, Fipke had gone through a very public divorce, one that cost him $123 million (Canadian currency), reported to be the largest such settlement in Canadian history.

That wasn't the only record Fipke set. In 2003, he made a big splash in the horse industry when bidding $2.7 million at the Barretts sale in Southern California to buy a 2-year-old son of the unproven Storm Cat stallion Sea of Secrets. At the time, it was the most ever paid for a 2-year-old at public auction. Trainer Bob Baffert advised Fipke on the purchase of the horse, later named Diamond Fury, who is still racing at the age of 7, but has yet to win a stakes race and has earned just $135,200.

Fipke ultimately decided he preferred breeding horses to buying them at auction. His Irish homebred Perfect Soul (by Sadler's Wells out of a Secretariat mare) was named a Canadian champion in 2003, and he was later retired to Darby Dan Farm in Kentucky to stand at stud. In 2004, Fipke paid $525,000 for a Japanese-bred mare by Sunday Silence that he wanted to breed to his new stallion.� The mare, Silence Beauty, had been brought to the United States in 1998, where she first sold for $1-million at the Keeneland July yearling sale, then was exported to Ireland, where she was failed to win in three starts. Fipke bought her at Keeneland after she produced two colts by Forestry. Neither of them has raced.

Silence Beauty was in foal to the Storm Cat stallion Tale of the Cat when Fipke bought her at Keeneland in November 2004. The foal she produced, Tale of Ekati, has turned into quite a gem.

That colt now has the diamond man dreaming of roses.