Gai Waterhouse Has Her Eyes on the 2010 Melbourne Cup

Gai Waterhouse is one of Australia’s best known horse trainers and has a large stable of horses. She has trained the winners of many major races throughout Australia and has held the title of most Group 1 winners in a racing season. Her horses have won Guineas, Derbies, Plates and Stakes races and she is he only trainer to ever trifecta the Golden Slipper (2001). However Australia’s most famous race, the Melbourne Cup, has so far eluded her – she now wants that to change.

Gai got her trainers licence in 1992, although she had been around horses her whole life as her father was the great trainer Tommy Smith. She had her first Group 1 winner in her first year as a trainer with Te Akau Nick in the 1992 Metropolitan Handicap. The same horse became her first Melbourne Cup starter in 1993 when he ran second behind Vintage Crop.

She had her second Melbourne Cup runner in 1995 when Nothin’ Leica Dane won his place in the field after winning the Victoria Derby three days earlier. The colt ran second which was an impressive feat as a three-year-old hasn’t won the Cup since Skipton in 1941. Nothin’ Leica Dane also ran in the 1996 Cup where he ran fifth. Since then Gai has only had five other Cup runners with the most recent being Mr Celebrity in 2005 who only beat one horse home.

Gai has now decided she doesn’t want to watch a Melbourne Cup and have no runners in it so she now has about six stayers in her stable that she is aiming at the Melbourne Cup. One of these is New Zealand horse Herculean Prince, by Yamanin Vital (NZ), who won four races in a row during the autumn. Another is Descarado who was the runner-up to Shoot Out in the AJC Australian Derby in April.

With the running of the 150th Melbourne Cup this year attracting even more publicity than the Cup usually generates it would be a great year for Gai to claim a Melbourne Cup for her trophy cabinet.

Jo Jackson

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