Motown Men quickly climbing the charts for West

ARCADIA, Calif. – Motown Men has spent the last three months defying logic and expectations for Gulliver Racing and trainer Ted H. West.

Claimed for $40,000 at Santa Anita in March, Motown Men won an optional claimer in April, finished third in the Grade 3 Precisionist Stakes on May 2, and won the $151,250 Tiznow Stakes for California-breds at a mile on May 23.

Those races have led to a start in the $500,000 Gold Cup at Santa Anita on Saturday. The Grade 1 Gold Cup is part of the Breeders’ Cup Win and You’re In program, offering a fees-paid berth for the winner to the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland on Oct. 31.

“I wouldn’t have thought about that two months ago,” West said last weekend.

Getting to that race is not out of the realm of possibility. Motown Men’s success has forced a change of goals with his recent results. In his three starts for Phil Bongiovanni’s Gulliver Racing, Motown Men has earned $148,800.

In some ways, this is an ideal time to try Motown Men in the richest race of his career, and the richest race of the Santa Anita spring-summer meeting. The competition is not as deep as it could have been earlier this year. Shared Belief, who won the $1,001,750 Santa Anita Handicap in March, is sidelined with injury. California Chrome, the 2014 Horse of the Year, has not raced in the United States since February and is suffering from a foot abscess that kept him out of action at Royal Ascot in England last week.

The success of Motown Men, 6, has reminded West of another wildly successful claim. Budroyale was a 5-year-old gelding when West claimed him for $50,000 here in February 1998. Budroyale later won seven stakes, finished second to Cat Thief in the 1999 Breeders’ Cup Classic at Gulfstream Park, and earned an astonishing $2,556,650 for owner Jeffrey Sengara before his retirement to a farm in British Columbia in 2001.

“I hope he’s the modern-day Budroyale,” West said of Motown Men.

While Motown Men has earned a fraction of that amount, he reminds West of Budroyale.

“Budroyale looked like a need-the-lead horse, and so did this guy,” West said. “The first couple of times we ran Budroyale, he was on the lead, and he learned to rate.”

Motown Men, who has won 6 of 29 starts and earned $384,459, notched his first four career wins by leading throughout, a span that included his debut at 5 1/2 furlongs in September 2011 and an allowance race at 1 1/8 miles on turf at Golden Gate Fields last November.

For West, Motown Men has won twice from off the pace, the optional claimer in April, when he was second early, and the Tiznow Stakes at a mile, where he closed from sixth of 10. Tyler Baze rode Motown Men in the Tiznow and impressed West with his decision to stalk the pace.

“Tyler did the right thing,” West said. “He was five or six wide in the first turn. He had to take back. He made a smart audible to save ground.”

Baze, who worked Motown Men last Sunday for the Gold Cup at Santa Anita, said he feared that West would keep the horse in claiming races after the win in the optional claimer in April. The rise in class has not been a surprise for the 32-year-old jockey.

“This horse is pure business on the track,” Baze said.

The goal for Gulliver Racing and West after the optional claimer in April was the Precisionist and Tiznow stakes. It has only been in recent weeks that West has considered the Gold Cup at Santa Anita.

“After the [Tiznow], he had had three races in six weeks and probably the three best races of his life,” West said. “I thought to come back in five weeks to the Gold Cup, things would have to go perfect. I was a bit leery, but things have gone perfect.”

In the Gold Cup at Santa Anita, West, 42, will be after his richest win since Budroyale won the $498,000 Goodwood Breeders’ Cup Handicap in 1999. West’s richest payday was the $800,000 that Budroyale earned for finishing second in the BC Classic.

The 1999 season has been the highlight of West’s career, a year in which his stable won 32 races from 150 starts and earned $2,554,133. In 2013, he won 2 of 46 starts and had stable earnings of $113,320.

West said that Sengara was once his primary client, and when they split, it took time to rebuild the stable.

“It was tough,” he said. “We mostly trained by Sengara for so long that I think potential owners didn’t want to be second fiddle in claiming horses.”

Motown Men was a claiming horse until April. Now, he is days from a start in a Grade 1.