Written In The Stars – A decade on – How Adrian Bott found his way in the shadow of Tulloch Lodge legends

Adrian Bott could be Australia’s version of Aidan O’Brien, which leaves him wordless.

“Jeez, that’s an incredible opening for an interview,” he says. “There’s a lot to unpack in that.”

From the top-tier stable and racing pedigree of his own down to his manners, sunglasses and dark, biddable hair, it isn’t an exaggeration, though it’s the first time he has heard the comparison.

“The pressure is on, well and truly,” he says.

It’s a Monday mid-morning, and Bott is watching the Premier Sale on television. It’s a couple of days since Sir Delius was led home in the Verry Elleegant by Autumn Glow, and the weekend washup is still fresh.

“Full credit to John Messara,” he says. “He’s gone in in a big way with that horse (Autumn Glow was a $1.8 million yearling), and he’s often very selective when he purchases horses. He’s put down a lot of money for her, stuck his neck out and he’s absolutely nailed it.”

It would have been nice, though, if she was at Tulloch Lodge instead of Camp Waller?

“Chris is the man for the job,” he says.

In 2016, when Gai Waterhouse announced a co-trainer partnership, it was with this polite, humble, not-yet-30 Adrian Bott. Today, he is still polite, still humble and not yet 40.

Bott was the assistant trainer and racing manager at Tulloch Lodge, and, at the time, Waterhouse’s motives for a partnership were hotly discussed. She was getting out, retiring. She was selling up to Chinese interests.

“There was a lot of speculation, and maybe that came from us not wanting to say too much,” Bott says. “But anything to do with Gai or Tulloch Lodge was always making headlines, so it was hard to be avoided.”

Bott says it wasn’t an exit strategy for Waterhouse. Nor was he chasing his time in the sun.

“I was more than happy to be in the background. I was happy to run the business and be associated with everything behind closed doors. I didn’t need my name on the training partnership.

“Maybe I was afraid of drawing all the scrutiny down on myself, but it was Gai’s decision to put my name on the partnership with her, and she was right.”

The juxtaposition of the two personalities was obvious. Bott was, still is, a shy and retiring type, and Waterhouse isn’t. The senior trainer pushed her young protégé straight into the spotlight in August 2016, and not by accident.

“I found myself being the face of the operation right through that early part, and I wonder if people initially weren’t sure how to perceive it,” Bott says. “They assumed Gai was at some sort of crossroads.”

From the get-go, the juxtaposition worked.

Waterhouse was the high panjandrum of Sydney racing; had she ever hung out the washing, because you just knew Bott was hanging out the washing every day. While Waterhouse charged through media with an actress’ touch, Bott was apologetic for keeping journalists waiting.

“I don’t know how the combination works, but it does,” he says. “It’s hard to explain, but Gai is one of those people who has a certain energy around her. It gives you a lift, gives you more confidence in yourself and with those around you. That’s the unique ability of a leader, isn’t it?”

Bott stops short of revealing why Waterhouse opted for a partnership in the first place. Sometimes, he admits, people don’t need to know everything.

However, Tulloch Lodge was surviving a significant shift in its profile at about that time. Denise Martin had moved her Star Thoroughbreds operation to Chris Waller at Rosehill. A little before that, the Gai-Singo bust-up over More Joyous had been public theatre.

Added to these, Gooree had readjusted its operation and loyalties.

“Between these three, they had made up a huge part of the stable,” Bott says, “and if you look back over the decade before of Gai’s success, a number of the horses were in one of those three colours.”

For the then 29-year-old Bott, who was suddenly handed the keys to the embattled castle, it was a test.

“But that was the exciting part,” he says. “I like a certain level of pressure. It lifts me to be the best version of myself. If I was going to be working as hard as I was and doing the hours I was doing, I didn’t want it any other way.”

There is no doubt Waterhouse knew the co-trainer she was getting.

Bott’s work ethic is as impeccable as his appearance. He ducks flattery and is an expert in deflecting questions about himself. He says he has always been shy, though it’s hard to imagine anyone being shy in such a high-profile job.

“I’d like to think the last ten years haven’t changed me,” he says. “I’d like to think my values as a person – the way we look at and treat and behave around others – haven’t changed at all just because of the way success has gone.

“There are skills I’ve learned, of course. Those of running a business or leading a team will have improved out of sight, but my personality, attributes, values, all those things … I’d like to think I’m the exact same person I was when I first started ten years ago.”

These days, Adrian is the most famous of the Bott clan, but it wasn’t always so. His father, Tony Bott, is the master of Evergreen Stud in Heatherbrae, in the Newcastle hinterland. His older brother, Aaron, is a former Darley man now running Evergreen with his father.

Bott Sr is, like his youngest son, the quiet kind; why use two words when one will do, all that.

In 1985, he headed a syndicate that bought the original Segenhoe Stud from Lionel Israel, only to watch its publicly listed fortunes sink on the stock market alongside those of Bart Cummings and, briefly, TJ Smith.

In 2009, Tony Bott sank $3 million into the purchase of the expensive, exceptional mare Princess Coup. In 2018, he went to $2.1 million for Courgette, the dam of Golden Slipper winner She Will Reign.

The older Bott possesses a legend in the business that few can match. He’s the kind of breeder that will worry when there’s too much money around; “It’s like everyone has discovered an oil well in the backyard”.

Growing up, the Bott boys had a firm upbringing with wholesome, grounded expectations. They would go to university. If they were privileged, they wouldn’t live by it.

Adrian ended up at Sydney University and stuck out a degree in design computing, though his heart wasn’t in it. It was the family discipline that got him through.

“You always want to be like your dad growing up,” he says. “I didn’t speak a lot myself. I just sort of sat there like a sponge and absorbed and listened to everything my dad said. We kids were always taught to have respect for people, and I can’t speak highly enough of both my parents in helping shape who I am.”

At the 10-year point of the Waterhouse-Bott partnership this year, the picture is good. They sit fourth on their state’s training table.

Putting aside the monuments that Waterhouse herself had already achieved long before Bott showed up, the pair have pocketed 29 Group 1 victories since 2016 and black-type earnings of nearly $83 million.

They have shared the spoils of Alligator Blood, Global Glamour, Storm Boy, Farnan, Converge, English, Hawaii Five Oh and Lady Of Camelot. The only thing missing, perhaps, has been a solid weight-for-age star.

And, despite a decade as co-captain, and with all the pressure and exposure that has come with it, not to mention the savage arena of competition, Bott says some things about him will never change. To this day, he worries about what might be said of him, or written about him, or thought of him.

“Gai is able to just drive on and ignore the noise,” he says. “She almost thrives on it, whereas I’ll be more hesitant; how’s that going to be perceived, or what’s going to be said, or what’s that headline going to be.”

Bott is reminded that with age comes the art of living indifferently, and there is, after all, over 30 years between he and Waterhouse. However, the younger trainer says he will always be wired to sweat the small stuff.

“It’s part of being measured, and it can be a negative as well, worrying too much. Gai just gets things done how she believes is right and she deals with the consequences later. Listening to her talk about her father, he seemed to be the exact same way.”

Few that orbit Tulloch Lodge and the Waterhouses are immune to the TJ effect. His presence, long past his death in 1998, is still huge.

“I found myself being the face of the operation right through that early part, and I wonder if people initially weren’t sure how to perceive it. They assumed Gai was at some sort of crossroads” – Adrian Bott

Interestingly, like Bott, Waterhouse’s mother, Valerie, was a far cry from TJ himself. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says Valerie was “shy and sheltered while he (TJ) was flamboyant and aggressively streetwise. She taught him manners, blunted his gruffness”, and so on.

In a way, the same has happened since Bott arrived at Tulloch Lodge. He is mild-mannered, honied and available, a Valerie beside the second coming of TJ.

Bott, however, sees it differently.

“It’s like a mirror image sometimes, the conversations that Gai and I have where she is doing with me exactly what her father used to do with her, arguing back or being tough on this and that,” Bott says. “I’m getting the lessons in the same manner, and it’s quite amazing to hear some of the stories and see the similarities.”

It’s hard to know how much of the race-going public in 2016 thought the Waterhouse-Bott alliance would last.

It’s hard to know if it was, after all, an exit strategy, but one that quietly failed when Bott fitted so brilliantly into the wheelhouse that there was no need for Waterhouse to go.

Or has it gone exactly as it was supposed to, a decades-long succession plan? Either way, Waterhouse picked her training partner expertly.

“I well and truly respect the enormity of the opportunities and support I’ve had,” Bott says, as if he was Aidan O’Brien himself.

The good ones rarely thank themselves.