Effective September 2014, the Kentucky Thoroughbred Farm Managers’ Club Farm
Manager of the Year Award has been renamed the Ted Bates Farm Manager of the
Year Award in honor of life member, 1968 President and 1979 Farm Manager of the
Year, Ted Bates. He is the permanent committee chairman for the annual selection
committee for this award which is made up of the past and current Farm Managers
of the Year and the past and current KTFMC Presidents along with Ted.
Ted, born Theodore Bright Bates in 1923 in Carrollton, Kentucky, comes from a
farming background that includes his grandfather, Newton Bright, who served
several terms in the Kentucky Senate and then was elected Commissioner of
Agriculture. As a boy, Ted moved from Carrollton to Eminence where his
grandfather’s farms were located and where his father, Theodore W. Bates, began
his law career in nearby New Castle. Ted later moved with his family to
Louisville and graduated from Louisville Male High School. Ted always considered
Eminence “home” and moved back there after high school where he spent a lot of
time with his grandparents working on their farms as well as others in the area.
Ted eventually continued his education at the University of Kentucky where he
obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture.
Ted’s first job in the Thoroughbred industry was at Coldstream Farm under
farm manager Charlie Kenney. Charlie also happened to have a foreman working for
him by the name of Melvin Cinnamon with whom Ted developed a lifelong
friendship. Ted said, “Mr. Kenney taught me the horse business, and Melvin
Cinnamon taught me horse husbandry.” Not able to afford marriage on his salary
at Coldstream, Ted became the assistant county extension agent for Shelby County
and shortly thereafter married his wife, Evelyn Nash.
In 1956 Melvin Cinnamon convinced Ted to become his assistant manager at
Maine Chance Farm owned by Elizabeth Arden Graham. Not an easy lady to work for,
Melvin Cinnamon, taking Ted with him, moved to Calumet in 1958 for Mrs. Gene
Markey after her manager, Mr. Paul Eblehardt, was struck by lightning while
playing golf and never completely recovered. In a career there lasting five
years, Ted worked with a great roster of stallions headed by the premiere sire,
Bull Lea. Ted’s favorite horse while at Calumet was Triple Crown Champion
Citation who impressed him with his speed, determination and intelligence.
While managing Foxtail Farm on Keene Road in Nicholasville, Fasig-Tipton
approached Ted about bringing that sales company back to Kentucky and hired him
as general manager in 1970. After a breeding stock and mixed sale the first few
years, the decision was made to have a yearling sale in 1974. Fasig-Tipton had
lost its lease at the Thoroughbred Training Center and leased Henry Alexander’s
farm on the Old Frankfort Pike where two barns were built for their first
yearling sale. Out of that first July Sale of forty-eight yearlings came Derby
and Belmont winner, Bold Forbes, and Preakness winner, Elocutionist. The next
year Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew came out of the Fasig-Tipton July Sale and
Fasig-Tipton was firmly established as an auction house once again in Central
Kentucky.
Feeling an orientation towards the farm, Ted left Fasig-Tipton in 1978 and
worked as manager of Wimbledon Farm for Hilary Boone for four years and then
served a brief stint with BKY farm. After this he served in an advisory capacity
for Paul Miller and Kermit Blackburn. When Elmer Whitaker had a dispersal of his
stock, Ted moved onto a tract of Bwamazon Farm on the Paris Pike where he
started and maintained his own breeding, boarding, breaking and sales operation
under the banner of Ted Bates Farm for more than twenty-two years. Probably one
of his favorite runners during this time was a filly named Miss Landy who was
named for one of Ted’s best clients over the years, Ms. Landy Armstrong, a New
Jersey lady who bred and raced the dam of Miss Landy, the stakes winning mare
All the Vees. When she died, Ted bought All the Vees from her estate and
continued to keep her there and breed her.
Ted has been the recipient of many honors and has held many offices over the
years in addition to being a Past President, Farm Manager of the Year and
permanent member of the Farm Manager of the Year selection committee for the
Kentucky Thoroughbred Farm Managers’ Club. He has served as a trustee for the
University of Kentucky and is a past president of the University of Kentucky
Alumni Association. He is a former member of the Board of Directors of Fasig-Tipton
and is currently a Director Emeritus of Fasig-Tipton. He has also served as the
1976-77 President of the Thoroughbred Club of America. Ted is the 2013 recipient
of the TOBA Hardboot Breeders Award which pays tribute to distinctive but unsung
breeders that help make up the backbone of the Thoroughbred industry. He is also
the father of Ted Bates, a vice president at Hilliard Lyons in Lexington, and
Eve Bates Greathouse, a Scott County resident.
It is with great admiration, respect and gratitude for Bates and his service
that the Club renames the Thoroughbred Farm Manager of the Year Award in his
honor. By proclamation of the officers and board of directors of the Kentucky
Thoroughbred Farm Managers’ Club, it shall henceforth be known as the “Ted Bates
Thoroughbred Farm Manager of the Year Award.”
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