Horse Racing / Bill Christine : Dame Fortune Continues to Smile on Riordan

Michael Riordan’s friends are starting to call him lucky.

How can Riordan deny it? After only a few years in the racing game, the 31-year-old former USC man has (1) won a divisional championship with a horse he couldn’t sell, (2) gotten $10 million for a horse who forgot how to run and (3) become the owner of a Kentucky Derby candidate whose breeding would seem to indicate otherwise.

In order, the horses are Bates Motel, Dunbeath and Zabaleta.

Bates Motel, whom Riordan raced in partnership with his mother, Jacqueline Getty Phillips, and his brother, David, was an ungainly yearling who was bought back after he drew only about $18,000 worth of attention at an English auction.

Bates Motel, whom Riordan named after the roadside joint where Tony Perkins did his shower number on Janet Leigh in the movie “Psycho,” went on to earn $850,000, winning the Santa Anita Handicap and being voted best older male in 1983. Syndicated for $7 million, Bates Motel now stands for a $50,000 stud fee in Kentucky.

Dunbeath, originally sold as a $100,000 yearling, raced for Riordan in England in 1982 and the 2-year-old son of Grey Dawn and Priceless Fame won four of five starts, including two stakes.

Only four European 2-year-olds were ranked ahead of Dunbeath at the end of the year. So along came Sheik Mohammed, of the free-wheeling, oil-rich family from Dubai, and he reportedly paid Riordan $10 million for Dunbeath.

At three, Dunbeath made only three starts, not winning a race. Sent to trainer Charlie Whittingham in California in 1984, Dunbeath made nine starts, his best finishes being a pair of seconds.

Riordan bought Zabaleta at a yearling auction for $400,000 in 1984. Twenty-seven offspring sired by the sprinter Shecky Greene were sold that year, and since only one other yearling brought six figures and the average price was $50,000, what Riordan paid seemed like an outlandish sum.

Zabaleta has only sprinted in three lifetime starts. He won a race and just missed in another at Santa Anita, then he went to Aqueduct last Saturday for a 4 1/2-length win in a division of the Bay Shore Stakes.

The 1 miles of the Kentucky Derby on May 3 may be too much for Zabaleta, but Michael Riordan has himself another stakes winner. That’s Lucky Riordan, from now on.

There’s another major race in Florida Saturday, and as usual a California-based horse will be favored to win it.

The Florida season would have been lackluster this year without California horses, and Turkoman, who’s already dazzled horsemen down there once, heads a small field in Saturday’s Widener Handicap at Hialeah.

California 3-year-olds have dominated the Florida season, Snow Chief winning the Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park and Badger Land taking last Saturday’s Everglades at Hialeah.

Expected to challenge Turkoman in the Widener are Gate Dancer, Proud Truth and Creme Fraiche, and perhaps a couple of others. Vanlandingham will not run and is being shipped to New York next week.

Gate Dancer and Proud Truth were unsuccessful at Santa Anita this season. Going to Florida, they still have a California horse to contend with.

Santa Anita will offer two major stakes on the same weekend for the first time this season. Both are grass stakes, the $200,000 San Luis Rey at 1 1/2 miles on Saturday and the $150,000 Santa Barbara Handicap at 1 miles on Sunday.

The ballyhooed Japanese horse, Symboli Rudolf, who has won 13 of 15 starts and earned about $3 million, will make his American debut in the San Luis Rey. Strawberry Road, a globe-trotting Australian-bred who won his first American race by taking the Arcadia Handicap at Santa Anita on March 9, will be favored, and others in the field will probably be Dahar, Alphabatim, Talakeno, Foscarini and Schiller.

Estrapade, who didn’t run in the Santa Ana Handicap on March 8 when rain forced the stake off the grass, is scheduled to make her first start this year in the Santa Barbara. Among the rivals will be Videogenic, who won the Santa Ana. Other likely starters are Mountain Bear, Justicara, Outstandingly, Flying Girl, Royal Regatta and Truffles.

Mr. Gennaro, whose win in the $100,000 Phoenix Gold Cup on March 9 was the richest in Bill Spawr’s training career, is back at Santa Anita and may run in the El Conejo Handicap next Wednesday.

A 5-year-old gelding who hadn’t run since last September, Mr. Gennaro was a $40,000 claim by Spawr for his owner, Hobie Alter, the boat designer and builder.

Mr. Gennaro, named after his breeder, Gennaro Montanino, was ridden at Turf Paradise by Frank Olivares, who’s also having a productive season at Santa Anita. Olivares is eighth in the jockey standings with 24 wins even though he’s had only about 150 mounts, far fewer than any of the riders ahead of him.

Racing Notes Trainer John Gosden is shipping 18 horses to New York, many of them stakes winners. Other California trainers with sizable divisions in New York include Wayne Lukas, Neil Drysdale and Bobby Frankel. . . . Since the Arlington Million in 1981 became the first $1 million thoroughbred race, 24 other races worth $1 million or more have been run. Only one horse, John Henry, has won two, and Laffit Pincay is the only jockey to have ridden four $1 million winners. Jorge Velasquez, Pat Eddery, Chris McCarron, Walter Guerra and Angel Cordero have each ridden two winners. . . . I’m Splendid is a rarity, a filly who was nominated for the Kentucky Derby, but not the Kentucky Oaks. . . . Bertram Torsten, who saddled a winner at Santa Anita last week, used to train standardbreds. . . . According to the Daily Racing Form’s annual survey, daily average attendance at thoroughbred tracks was off about 2% last year and crowds have dropped 24% since 1965. Betting last year was up less than 1/2%. . . . The Los Angeles County Fairgrounds at Pomona has been renamed Fairplex Park, where the inaugural harness season opens on April 22. . . . Hollywood Park’s first quarter-horse season, which opens July 25, includes the $835,000 Dash for Cash Futurity on its stakes schedule. . . . Major thoroughbred dates at Hollywood this year include the Century Handicap on May 4, the Hollywood Invitational on May 26, the Californian on June 1, the Gamely on June 8, the Sunset on July 4, the Hollywood Oaks on July 6, the Vanity Handicap on July 13, the Hollywood Gold Cup on July 20 and the Swaps on July 21.