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Dyslexia doesn't slow Keen Ice trainer Romans

Jennie Rees
@CJ_Jennie
Trainer Dale Romans talks with a friend outside of his barn at Churchill Downs.
October 15, 2015

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Dale Romans thought he was stupid.

Lynn Romans knew otherwise, even before her son was diagnosed with severe dyslexia at age 6, vowing, "I wasn't going to let him fall through the cracks."

Fast forward 40 years and Romans trains the only horse to defeat Triple Crown winner American Pharoah in more than a year, with Keen Ice capturing Saratoga's Travers Stakes by a half-length. Saturday at Keeneland, those 3-year-olds meet again, along with the two-time champion mare Beholder and six other Grade I winners in the $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic.

Romans also has the favorite in the $2 million Juvenile in Brody's Cause, along with Unbridled Outlaw in that race and Ma Can Do It in the Juvenile Fillies.

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The 49-year-old product of Shively in southwest Louisville, the son of the late trainer Jerry Romans Sr., has become a power broker in the Sport of Kings, a leader among the Kentucky horsemen who has influential politicians both in the commonwealth and Washington on speed dial. After winning his first race with a $3,500 claiming horse at old Latonia racetrack in 1987, Romans today ranks No. 2 in career victories (654) at Churchill Downs, with square aim on Bill Mott's 687. Known for speaking his mind and his folksy ways, the permanently disheveled-looking Romans has become a go-to interview for the media and in 2012 was voted the Eclipse Award as outstanding trainer.

Some Breeders' Cup participants have traveled thousands of miles to get to Keeneland. Romans only had to trek the 75 miles from Louisville, but it reflects a long and arduous journey that started in an era when people were just beginning to understand that not everyone learns in the same way.

Keen Ice gets a bath from groom, Nestor Maldonado, outside of Dale Romans' barn at Churchill Downs.
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"I felt like I was in a dark room," Romans said. "I was very shy and (had) zero self-confidence. I never wanted to be called on in class. We'd have a test and I'd think, 'How do these people focus? I was here the same amount of time, and I can't do it.' It was frustrating. I'd zone out and would daydream all day."

Romans heaps credit on his mother for providing him the groundwork to thrive. It's praise she deflects.

"I didn't do any more than any mother would," she said. "Although he couldn't read, he loved to be read to – about anything. I would read, read, read to him all the time. Then I would question him about the story we'd read, or asked him his take on it: 'What would you have done?' I knew he wasn't dumb. So I tried to get him all the help I could."

After Dale failed his first-grade achievement test, Lynn said she showed a second-grade teacher papers that Dale had written "completely backward, starting with his name on the right-hand side of the paper. You could hold it up to the mirror and read it.

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"She had taken classes in learning disabilities. She looked at it and said, 'He has a learning disability, there's no doubt in my mind.'"

"The doctor told my mom it was the worst form of dyslexia he'd ever seen and the highest intelligence level he'd ever rated," Romans said. "'And that's a bad combination,' he said. 'Because you have to work hard on his self-esteem. Because he's smart enough to think he's stupid.'"

They went to a new program at the University of Louisville, the mother learning how to help her son at home.

"Every day my mom told me how smart I was, explaining to me what was going on," Romans said. "I still can't go in a room with bad acoustics. I hear every little voice echo, everything going on. It drives me nuts. I can't sit with my back to people where I hear things behind me. When we go to a restaurant, I have to sit with my back to a wall. I can't be in bright, overhead lighting, like in a hospital, for any bit of time. It drives me crazy.

"My mom shag-carpeted the house before it was popular. We would have only lamp lighting. She would put me in a corner to do my homework, on a couch where I could have total focus. She'd pat me on the arm – they told her to do these exercises – where the rhythm would relax me and help me focus."

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Because he couldn't tell his left from his right, Lynn put a ring on his right hand so he could memorize it as "Romans ring right." She wrote "right" and "left" on the end of his tennis shoes. Two smart and caring teachers teamed with Lynn to get Dale through school, including hatching a plan to circumvent Jefferson County's new school busing so he could stay in their care.

"I didn't care what I had to do," Lynn said. "They were not going to push him aside like they did other kids I saw."

Romans' love of racing proved another aid.

"He could read racing charts and racing form," Lynn said. "He told me he really learned fractions from the racetrack, like furlongs."

While older brother Jerry Jr. (vice president for technology for R.J. Reynolds) and younger sibling Bruce (a television screenwriter in Los Angeles) would become college graduates, Lynn made Dale a deal: Graduate from Butler and he could go on the racetrack full time.

"She said, 'Just get through high school and be the best horse trainer you can be,'" Romans recalled.

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While "it was like a light came on" as sophomore at Butler, Romans also said, "It wasn't until late adulthood that I felt like I am very smart, smarter than most. But I used to look at the way people would do things, even like training horses or politics, and I'd say that's so different than I'd see it, or how I would do it. But I didn't have the confidence to know that I was right most of the time.

"I thought so much more of other people's opinions than my own. I never was a copier, so I couldn't copy what other people did. So I just did what came natural and felt right to me as far as training horses."

Romans dislikes the term learning disabilities, preferring to say he and others "just learn differently."

Keen Ice trains on the track at Churchill Downs with exercise rider Faustino Aguilar.
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Looking back, prominent Louisville businessman Frank Jones, who had horses with Jerry Sr. and then with his son, believes finding a way to work through dyslexia has made Romans the trainer he is today.

"He has the ability to absorb information, understand the successes other people have, putting it in his own mix of all the dynamics of racing," Jones said. "That, and having a really good memory to recall what worked and what didn't work. His inability to read and write, if you will, his mind has compensated by having the ability to absorb and retain the things he experiences and/or he gleans from other people's experiences."

Former jockey Tammy Fox, who has known her life partner for 25 years, had their two now-grown children before she learned Romans was dyslexic. She then understood why he early on came across as standoffish to people, when actually he was shy and insecure. Why he had asked her to sign his name on checks, asked her to read things to him.

"It wasn't until probably 15 years ago that I really understood, just from him talking about it, feeling more comfortable with me," she said. "He covered it up pretty well.

"He's probably one of the smartest people you'll ever meet. He has knowledge of just crazy stuff, coming up with all these obscure answers when we watch Jeopardy! His writing still isn't that great, but he can manage. He can read. He's not going to read a book but he has a whole bunch of books on tape."

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There could scarcely be a more stark contrast between the Breeders' Cup's $26 million international racing extravaganza that will play out Friday and Saturday at Keeneland, the track built and run by bluebloods, and Romans' decidedly blue-collar roots.

Jerry Romans Sr., who was divorced from Lynn when Dale was 6, was a racing fan and handicapper who began training a string of mostly cheap claiming horses while working full-time elsewhere. His horses trained every other day, using one exercise rider for 15 horses.

There were plenty of road trips to minor-league tracks such as old Latonia and Beulah Park. Dale called the barn the "one place where I could relax." However, he saw things could be better.

"One of the reasons I went out on my own was that he was content with having claiming horses," he said. "He just never wanted the pressure. It aggravated me. He had clients I thought that if we went to the sale, we could move the stable to the next level. But the older I get, I think he realized that he wasn't the right person to invest that kind of money. ... (But) he always encouraged me to strive for better."

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Romans got his trainer's license in 1986, going 0-for-52 that year. Even so, Jones recalls telling "anybody who would listen that 'one of these days, Dale is going to have good horses.'"

Romans finally won a race the next year when $1,500 purchase Miss Mindy won that $3,500 maiden-claiming race. It also was the first for a jockey named Laura Hernan, Jerry Sr.'s exercise rider for 15 horses who today is Dale's bookkeeper. She also is not surprised that - 1,817 victories and $95 million in purses later - Romans would win races like the Travers, Dubai World Cup (Roses in May), Preakness (Shackleford) and to date three Breeders' Cup races, including his first in 2009 with the Jones-owned Tapitsfly.

"He always had that entrepreneurial spirit, always wanted bigger and better," Hernan said. "He was always a dreamer."

Trainer Dale Romans poses with Keen Ice at Churchill Downs.
October 15, 2015