In the second part of his brilliant new series recalling his personal favorites, Jay Hovdey talks to John Gosden about Bates Motel, who was the trainer’s first big winner in California in the 1980s
The movie Psycho, released in 1960, was a critical and box office hit that went on to become a cinema classic. It also engendered a justifiable suspicion of motel showers, but that’s for another day.
In 1983, Hollywood, in its infinite wisdom, released Psycho II for those who did not get the point the first time around. The setting, once again, revolved around the eerie Bates Motel and its murderously disturbed proprietor, Norman Bates. The movie was not a particular success, but quite by chance the name of Bates Motel rang throughout the land that year – as long as the ringing was done in the horse racing section of the sports pages.
Bates Motel was a T
horoughbred of genuine appeal, noteworthy as a consummate late bloomer and a physical specimen of decidedly acquired taste. He was big in every direction without being handsome, topped by a pair of ears that could pick up satellite transmissions if properly aimed.
A diplomatic Englishman
His trainer, the diplomatic Englishman John H.M. Gosden, would take great pains to avoid references to the aesthetics of Bates Motel in favor of his lilting stride and powerful thrust.
Those attributes were on display for only about 13 months between August of 1982, when he lit up an allowance event at Del Mar, and September of 1983, when he impressed a discerning New York audience with a pair of unlucky losses.
Combined with a flourish of four straight stakes victories earlier in ’83, the New York form was enough to earn an Eclipse Award for Bates Motel, while at the same time giving the 32-year-old Gosden his first of many champions to come.
Gosden had been training in California for barely a year when he hopped an eastbound plane in January 1981 to take a look at a 2-year-old for his newest clients, Jacqueline Getty and her son, Michael Riordan.
“He was put through the sales here in Newmarket, but no one wanted him,” Gosden said recently from his Clarehaven Stables on Bury Road. The reserve price was 35,000gns for the Kentucky-bred son of Sir Ivor, but the bidding stopped at 32,000 – about $80,000 in those days – and the owners took him back.
“He spent a bit of time at Warren Place with Henry Cecil, then was sent back to America,” Gosden said. “When Jackie Getty and Michael Riordan asked if I’d like to train a horse for them I said of course. I had 10 or 12 in the barn at the time.”
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Bates Motel was in temporary residence at a training center in Holly Hill, South Carolina. “It was an interesting experience,” Gosden went on. “I got there early one morning to see this huge, flop-eared Sir Ivor colt being pre-trained by none other than Lucien Laurin.”
‘I think he's he’s got something’
That’s Lucien Laurin, as in the trainer of Triple Crown winner Secretariat and dual Classic winner Riva Ridge. “Lucien was quite the flashy dresser,” Gosden said.
“I recall he was wearing his usual colorful combination. After watching the colt canter around the track wearing blinkers we went to breakfast, and I’ll never forget what Lucien said. ‘I don’t know what it is about this colt, but I think he’s got something.’ That was quite a statement.”
It also had the benefit of being correct, although the ‘something’ Bates Motel hinted at as a young 2-year-old took its time to bloom. Gosden had to wait for colt’s various parts to properly align, which meant Bates Motel did not make his first start until February of his 3-year-old season. He did not win a maiden race until his fourth start in late May.
By then the Classic colts of 1982 already had dealt with the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes. Bates Motel won that maiden race at Hollywood Park on May 31, Memorial Day, the same afternoon Conquistador Cielo won the Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont Park. But while Conquistador Cielo went on to take the Belmont Stakes, the Dwyer, the Jim Dandy, and the title as Horse of the Year, young Bates Motel could produce only an embarrassing try on turf and a poor performance on the dirt in his two following starts before the light finally came on.
Gosden at the time was a rising star in California, but after a decade in the States he returned to England to win multiple training titles, win a pair of Epsom Derbys, and train such household names as Enable, Stradivarius, Kingman, Golden Horn, Mishriff, Cracksman and Ravens Pass, to list just a handful.
Bates Motel was ridden most often by veteran Terry Lipham, who successfully toggled between Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses during a career cut short by two serious falls in his early 40s. Admired for his horsemanship, Lipham was a soulmate of such veteran trainers as Charlie Whittingham and Jerry Fanning, which is why keen younger trainers like Gosden and fellow Brit Ian Jory sought Lipham’s services.
Compelling headlines
However, it was the owners of Bates Motel who supplied the most compelling headlines. Jacqueline Marie Manewal was from a prominent St. Louis family known for their bakeries. Her first husband was Michael L. Riordan, brother of eventual Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, whose Equity Funding Corp. rose to great heights in the financial world before falling into disrepute and earning a huge federal fine.
Jacqueline and Michael were married in 1952 and had four children before he was killed in a freak mudslide that raced through their home in the posh Mandeville Canyon neighborhood of West LA during a ferocious storm siege in January of 1969. Riordan was 41.
The following year, while seen on the arm of oil empire heir and company executive George F. Getty II, Jacqueline bought the yearling filly Sunday Purchase for $43,000 at a Keeneland sale.
George and Jacqueline were married in 1971, accompanied by fanfare befitting the son of J. Paul Getty, at one time the world’s richest private citizen. George Getty died in 1973 in circumstances that remain mysterious to this day, although that did not keep director Danny Boyle from playing his death as a garish suicide at the beginning of the televised mini-series Trust, aired first in 2018.
Michael Riordan was just 28 when Bates Motel came into their lives. A film buff, Riordan gets credit for the colt’s haunting name, suggesting that a clever line in a stallion ad someday might read: “Send your mare to Bates Motel.”
For that matter, the lineage of the horse was almost as interesting as those of his humans. In 1968, Sir Ivor won the English 2,000 Guineas, Epsom Derby, Champion Stakes, and Washington, D.C. International. His sire was Secretariat’s half-brother, Sir Gaylord, and his trainer was Vincent O’Brien, one of Gosden’s earliest mentors.
Sunday Purchase never raced, but some of her siblings, out of the Count of Honor mare Dame Fritchie, were accomplished. Rest Your Case won the 1973 Hopeful Stakes at Saratoga. The mare Frederick Street was a star of the Ohio circuit who crossed the river to finish second against the boys in the Clark Handicap at Churchill Downs. Their full- sister, Hopes Ahead, was the dam of Optimistic Gal, whose 10 major stakes wins included the Kentucky Oaks, Alabama, and Spinster.
T.V. Lark, the sire of Sunday Purchase, brought impressive credentials to the mix. In 1974, competing against such heavyweights as Round Table, Northern Dancer, and the late Bold Ruler, T.V. Lark led all North American sires with earnings of $1.2 million and 121 wins by his daughters and sons. Bred in California, T.V. Lark himself was a star on the track, having beaten Kelso on the square in the 1961 Washington, D. C. International to be hailed as the season’s grass champion.
‘A big, backward horse’
But that was all on paper. Gosden, training from scratch, had to deal with the ungainly creature at hand. “Bates was a big, backward horse, so we went very gently with him,” Gosden recalled.
“It was on Christmas Eve we breezed him three-eighths of a mile, and he went in 36 and change. I thought, ‘Whoa, we’d better run this boy.’ But at three he took forever to get his act together. He could lug in like nothing else. In a couple of his early races he ripped two boots off Ray Sibille putting him against the rail.
“He was quite a thug of a horse, really,” the trainer added. “If he’d been a human being, I think he would have ended up in federal prison. Not aggressive, just very hard-headed. He was quite some character.”
Bates Motel won an allowance race at Del Mar during the summer of 1982, after which Gosden spotted the colt in a little handicap at Bay Meadows during a meet sponsored by the San Mateo County Fair. Bates Motel won the race, and the Gosdens – John and wife Rachel Hood – celebrated on the town.
“San Francisco had a good opera house,” said Gosden, a lifelong buff. “Bates won well and showed a bit of class. And as I recall we saw Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, which was quite appropriate for California.”
Bates Motel descended upon Santa Anita that winter of 1982-83 with his disparate parts finally firing in one direction. He won an allowance race on New Year’s Day, then had a forgettable afternoon floundering in a muddy Charles H. Strub Stakes, followed by a smart recovery to win the 9-furlong San Antonio Handicap.
“That night Rachel and I went out to dinner in Pasadena,” Gosden recalled. “I said, ‘I think we’ve finally found one.’”
When the 1983 Santa Anita Handicap arrived amidst a series of February and March rains, Gosden made no secret that the wet conditions had played havoc with the tender feet supporting the tonnage of Bates Motel. His hooves cracked and were patched, right up to the day of the Handicap, while Gosden did just enough to keep the big horse fit to the task.
Climbing the slippery pole
And the task was considerable. A field of 17 lined up for the 46th running of the mile-and-a-quarter event. Breaking from post 13, Lipham let the pacesetters race through the opening quarter past the grandstand before working his way to mid-pack down the backstretch. From there, horse and rider launched a steady, sweeping run to take the lead in the stretch and draw off to win by 2½ lengths. Among the beaten was The Wonder, trained by Whittingham.
“Charlie took great pride in being the first to arrive at the gap in the morning to open the gates to the racetrack,” Gosden said. “The morning after the Handicap, I made a point of beating him to it. But as I’m standing there, I feel a cold hand squeeze my neck and Charlie’s voice in my ear, ‘It’s a slippery pole, lad.’”
Bates Motel got a break after the Santa Anita meet and reappeared at Del Mar to win the San Diego Handicap by seven lengths over The Wonder. After that, it was off to the east coast, where the first stop was Monmouth Park for the Monmouth Handicap, in those days a Grade 1 event at 9 furlongs. The opposition included Whitney Handicap winner Island Whirl, Preakness winner Linkage, and Belmont Stakes winner Bet Big.
Humbling the best handicap horses
“The enormous son of Sir Ivor, making his first start outside of California, humbled the best handicap horses in the country with an easy 2½-length victory in the $279,200 Monmouth Handicap today at Monmouth Park,” wrote Steven Crist in the New York Times. “He barely broke a sweat and he missed the track record by only a fifth of a second.”
Then it was on to New York, where Bates Motel and Gosden took up temporary residence in the Allen Jerkens barn at Belmont Park.
“We got to know each other,” Gosden said. “Allen would say, ‘You California trainers – all you ever do is train for speed. Why don’t you work a mile once in a while?’ So I did. I worked Bates Motel a mile … and got him beaten, twice.”
But not by much. Slew o’ Gold, a 3-year-old getting five pounds and Angel Cordero, beat Bates Motel by a dirty nose in the Woodward Stakes at 9 furlongs. Breeder John Gaines, who had bought into Bates Motel, insisted Lipham be replaced for the subsequent Marlboro Cup by Chris McCarron, who was having a banner season. Still, the result was agonizingly familiar.
“There was a bit of pressure, since Terry got on very well with the horse,” Gosden said. “As for the race, Cordero spent the whole time driving us to the outside fence with Slew o’ Gold. In the meantime, Jacinto Vasquez went the short way ‘round on the inside and beat us both.”
This is not sour grapes. Andrew Beyer of the Washington Post saw the same race. “For every step of this 1¼-mile Classic, [Cordero] rode a tactical race against Bates Motel,” Beyer wrote. “He proceeded to win the battle but lose the war.”
Watching the Marlboro from home in California, I recall a shoe or something being thrown at the set at the sight of Cordero playing his herding game. Still, finishing a close third under such circumstances did nothing to dim the growing reputation of Bates Motel. He was voted champion Older Male and went to stud at Gainesway Farm in Kentucky, where he served until he was pensioned in 2003.
His offspring included the stakes-winning filly Barbarika, who in turn produced the filly Sherriffs Deputy, to the cover of Deputy Minister. In March of 2004, Sherriffs Deputy delivered a Smart Strike colt with a forthright blaze and a pair of perfect hind stockings. Seven months later, Bates Motel died, his passing memorialized by a plaque near a fountain at Gainesway. The Smart Strike colt became Curlin, a two-time Horse of the Year, and among the many good reasons to celebrate Bates Motel as a world-class Thoroughbred to remember.
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