An eye for equine talent shaped Dale Smicklas’ career
Second in a four-part series of conversations with Polo Hall of Fame 2027 inductee Dale Smicklas
Dale Smicklas is widely considered to be one of the best ‘backs’ in polo history. He had the strength to put distance on the ball both backwards and forwards. He also realized power was not enough and he needed to carry the ball – the ability he valued most was being able to recognize a good horse.
When money was tight in the early days, he would visit the Florida clubs – Royal Palm Polo Club in Boca Raton, Gulfstream in Lake Worth and Palm Beach Polo – and watch horses playing for the other professionals. If he spotted one that looked promising, but did not seem suited to the player, he would approach and ask if it was for sale. He bought several horses this way – identifying potential that others had missed. “I bought three horses in about a four-year timeframe from different people who didn’t get along with horses. I kind of figured out what to do to be more helpful to the horse. They ended up being great horses for me,” he said.
A fortuitous partnership with Colorado horseman Clyde Canino, was instrumental in Dale’s access to good horses. Clyde, an independently wealthy restaurateur, had a passion for buying young Thoroughbreds off the racetrack and assessing whether they had the temperament for the demands of high goal polo.
Dale and Clyde formed an alliance from tried and tested trust. By the time Dale reached six or seven goals, he estimates that 85 to 90 percent of his string were horses that had been sourced by Clyde.
Approached in Kentucky by Ernesto Trotz and Memo Gracida – both astute enough to recognize the value of Dale’s source – Clyde insisted he would not sell anything before Dale had made his selections. Dale never forgot the statement of loyalty and from then on purchased every horse Clyde produced, selling them on to others if they were not for him to play.
This arrangement was paramount in his ascent to eight goals. “It was a very unique situation I ended up in,” Dale said. “And as far as I’m concerned, a huge part of the reason I got to eight goals, because I had some magnificent horses from him. I really did.”
One horse stood out among the rest, Taipan – the best horse Dale says he ever owned. The sale topper at the Houston Polo Horse Sale, the horse was bought by Will Farish – a name synonymous with polo sponsor at the time. Through the grapevine, Dale learned down the road, that things were not going well and the horse needed a new home. Doing his due diligence Dale approached two of his peersand compatriots, Red Armour and Owen Rinehart, who he knew had played the horse. “I remember Owen Rinehart telling me specifically – ‘If that horse is for sale, he’s the best horse in America for sale,’” Dale said.
Charlie Flanders was managing Will’s polo operation. “He just told Will ‘Look we can’t keep this horse. He’s gonna hurt somebody. He’s gonna hurt another horse. He’s just way too tough to deal with,'” said Dale. “And so I made a deal with Will to have Charlie bring him to Florida and let me try him. And if I didn’t want him, then I would pay his expenses to bring him there and take him back to Houston. Long story short, he did bring him, and he was by far the best horse that I had ever thrown a leg over at that point in time in my life.”
Exceptional on the field, with a supremely competitive instinct, Dale regularly played him for two and a half chukkers as he ascended the handicap ladder from six to eight goals. “He had the heart of a lion,” he said. “He was just a magnificent, magnificent horse. He was a horse you never had to use a whip and spur on. If he felt another horse was catching him he just automatically sped up on his own.”
The problems – as forewarned – lay back at the barn. “He was really tough to deal with,” said Dale. “He was almost dangerous.”
Dale hired six-goal player Antonio Galvan to work for him and made sure to warn him about the volatile horse in the barn. “I told him to come to the barn at 5:30,” Dale said. “‘You feed all the horses. You clean the stalls, except don’t go in this stall while this horse is eating.’”
Day one of Antonio’s employment did not go according to plan. “I get to the barn at about 6:30 at the club barns in Wellington,” Dale recalled. “And I hear somebody screaming. It sounded like it was coming from my stalls. So I go running down to where my stalls are. Sure enough, Antonio’s in the stall with a pitchfork, and Taipan has a hold of him by a love handle and is holding him off the ground. I just yelled, ‘Taipan, goddamn it!’ And he dropped the kid.”
Recovering from the shock, Dale reiterated his warning. “I told you not to go in the stall while he’s eating,” he said. Antonio replied: “I know, but I guess I didn’t think he’d be that bad.”
“How do you think I was able to buy him?” Dale said.
That era, compared to modern-day polo, was different when it came to horses. Unlike the vast breeding programs today, where attention is paid to bloodlines, players were constantly seeking to find that one good horse, no matter its origins – seeking ‘lightning in a bottle’. Dale bought a horse named Aramis from Rege Ludwig, who had orignally bought him out of a ‘kill pen’. The horse – saved from slaughter – went on to win Best Playing Pony with Dale in the 22-goal Prince of Wales Trophy in England.
But the whole horse market changed at the end of the ’80s when money started to appear on the table for those one-off horses and the timing turned out to be a savior for Dale. “I bought this mare from Clyde in May,” said Dale. “He just stick and balled horses on his farm, but they’d never played a chukker when I bought them.”
He brought the young mare, named Ella, to Oklahoma where Canadian player Steve Dalton, embarking on his own professional polo career, was riding green horses for Dale. Watching Steve play her for the first time, Dale was less than impressed. “I watched him play her first chukker, and he couldn’t meet another horse on her,” he said. “She would bail out so bad.” Dale was leaving town with playing commitments abroad. “I was thinking to myself as I left for England, ‘Oh my God. That’s gonna be a big project.’”
Returning to the USA, Dale went straight to Kentucky where Steve – who was playing Dale’s horses on Wayne Garrison’s team – picked him up from the airport. “Hey, tomorrow I’m in the finals of the eight goal, and you need to come and, and see the horses play,” Steve said. “And you’ll never believe who my sixth chukker horse is, Ella.”
Skeptical but curious, Dale turned up to watch Steve play the four-year old. “She was just unbelievable,” he said. Steve voiced his belief that Dale could play Ella in the US Open. “I decided to play her in practice games so that I could back off if I needed to, but he was right,” said Dale. “I probably could have played her in tournament polo.”
Dale bided his time before taking Ella to Florida to play in the 22 goal league. “We get done playing against White Birch, and Gonzalo Pieres comes up to me and he said, ‘I would like to try the three horses that you played in the fourth and the fifth and the sixth chukker,’” Dale recalled. “I said, ‘They’re not for sale.’ And he said, ‘Well, you need to hear me out. I’m buying horses for Kerry Packer.’”
The Australian media magnate changed the worldwide horse market as he sent his players out to buy the best horses they could find for the new Ellerson high goal polo team, that Kerry would patron to considerable success in the 1990s. Dale reiterated that they were not for sale, but he said he would think about it. He called his dad who did not mince his words. “You’re an idiot,” Dale recalled him saying.
Dale decided to renege. Ella joined Ellerston – sold for $100,000. “That was a lot of money for a horse back then,” said Dale. Carlos Gracida and Ernesto Trotz both played her in the Argentine Triple Crown. “She’s in an Argentine breeding book as having been sold by me for a record price. She was just an incredible mare, but I had only had her two months,” Dale said. “It wasn’t like I sold one of my best horses and it was gonna hurt my career.”
In 1994, Dale had a “bad wreck” on the number one field at Palm Beach Polo – an understatement when his mare broke her leg running wide open, fell and broke her neck and landed on top of Dale. The subsequent 10 minutes of unconsciousness as Dale lay under the mare with a severed ACL, broken right leg, cracked sternum, broken jaw and broken collarbone in three places, spelt the end of the season. He was faced with the unenviable reality of having to sell horses to make it through the year.
“I was playing another mare that I had gotten from Clyde then by the name of Talia, a dark brown mare,” he said. “Gonzalo came to me and he said, ‘Do you need to sell a couple of horses?’ And I’m like, ‘Um, actually I do.'” Gonzalo wanted Talia – but offered just $80,000 this time. Dale held out and it paid off. Benjamin Araya was looking to buy a horse for his new team Pegasus with Marty Gruss. He was prepared to pay $100,000 and by negotiating the additional purchase of a second horse for $40,000, Dale was able to survive the rest of the season.
Check back next Wednesday for Part Three of the Dale Smicklas series: ‘American duo – polo’s heyday for Smicklas and his peers’.
In the meantime – if you missed it – here is Part One:
From Chicago to the Colorado Cowboy: the making of Dale Smicklas