Staying on top for decades – well, it takes a special kind of person. Just ask Gai

The expression is “only fools and horses”. Gai Waterhouse clearly prefers horses.

Before the fizz of her sparkling water has dulled, Waterhouse has powered through forthright opinions on gluttony, work ethics, personal grooming and the culture of criticism in Australia.

Every assertion is delivered with a certainty as black and white as the outfits in the Birdcage at Flemington Racecourse on Derby Day. I’m already scared to reach for the bread and wishing that I’d shaved.

“I will have a coffee,” she instructs the waiter at her favourite Melbourne restaurant Bacash, opposite the Royal Botanic Garden in South Yarra.

“But make sure it’s not the first coffee from the machine for the day. That is never good.”

Like an obedient thoroughbred, the waiter, who was greeted affectionately by Waterhouse before her instructions, canters off to retrieve the coffee.

“Well, I’ve given up coffee,” she says moments later, raising the steaming cup to her lips. “I’ll have a hot chocolate to start the day, but I’ve been up since three this morning, so sometimes I need a pick-me-up.”

Gai Waterhouse at Bacash in Melbourne.Credit: Simon Schluter

There’s a twinkle in Waterhouse’s eyes – which lingers until our farewells – as she acknowledges the contradiction.

As the first Australian female trainer to win the Melbourne Cup in 2013, with eight Golden Slipper winners under her belt, who grew up in a time when the industry was dominated by men such as her father Tommy Smith, she’s used to forging her own rules.

Last year Waterhouse became the only woman to be inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame as a Legend. In 2018, she was inducted into the Australian Sporting Hall of Fame. It’s a level of success that she knew would elude her as an actress in London, where she lived following her studies at the University of Sydney.

“I was employed the whole time I was away, but I didn’t feel I was going to be top of my profession. I was hoping I’d be Nicole Kidman or Cate Blanchett.”

Witnessing the attentive restaurant staff’s efforts to please their regular customer, it’s easy to imagine Waterhouse matching Blanchett in the regal title role of Elizabeth. At the first sign of a puddle, the waiters look ready to throw suit jackets on the ground in the style of Sir Walter Raleigh.

Instead, Waterhouse appeared in Doctor Who as Presta, a former Time Lord, wearing the space version of boho attire, and in the ’70s Australian soap opera The Young Doctors.

“I thought it was better to go and do something that I might do very well. Sometimes you go into your family business because you know it. You’ve known it because dad and mum talked about it from the moment you came out of the womb. And my father talked racing. Mum talked fashion, and it was easy to blend the two.”

Gai Waterhouse and her father T.J. Smith in 1985.Credit: Gary McLean; Golding; Holbrook/Fairfax Media

When Waterhouse officially started as a trainer in the ’90s, she was already a trailblazer. In today’s climate she would risk being called a nepo baby and lumped in with Cindy Crawford’s supermodel daughter Kaia Gerber or the model/photographer/cook and son of David and Victoria, Brooklyn Beckham.

Her children Tom and Kate, with her bookmaker husband Robbie, could be tarred with the same horse brush. Online bookmaking entrepreneur Tom and racing fashion commentator Kate have not strayed far from the track.

“I can’t understand why everyone is so negative about everything nowadays,” she says.

“What a wonderful thing it is if mum’s a famous model. Of course, if mum is Victoria Beckham, good luck to them.

“Those kids have got a bigger hurdle than if they have nothing because they’ve already got everything. Will they be able to improve on that? Most of them won’t.”

As a child growing up in the inner-Sydney suburb of Potts Point, neighbouring Kings Cross, signs of Waterhouse’s future success were well-hidden. At home, she retreated into her imagination, there was no television in the apartment, “and everyone around the area was old. There were no children”.

When she wasn’t daydreaming, Waterhouse would be shadowing her father at the markets or riding ponies with her cousins.

“I didn’t have an opportunity to learn to read, so I didn’t go to school until I was seven. This oversized creature arrives at Rose Bay Convent, and I was very tall, couldn’t read and could barely write.

“If I wanted to be heard, I’d yell out in class and drove everyone ballistic. I was always in trouble. But the nuns must have seen something and realised that if they could marshal this sort of wild, unruly kid … Nowadays, they’d say ‘She’s got ADHD’, but when I grew up, no one had it. There were just kids like me who were a bit hard to handle.

“The nuns helped me. They didn’t come down on me and screw me into the ground. They just directed me.”

Any thoughts of directing Waterhouse seem to have stayed in the schoolyard or on the set of Doctor Who. It is obvious that today she calls the shots, alongside her training partner since 2016, Adrian Bott.

“I talk to Adrian 10 times a day about different things. You’re always planning ahead,” she says. “That was very much dad’s philosophy. I don’t want to know about the past, move on to the future because that’s where everything is.”

A plate of half a dozen oysters arrives and with a deft flick of her wrist Waterhouse tucks a cloth napkin into the collar of her blush silk blouse. It’s a fleeting example of her father’s practical side and her mother Valerie’s love of fashion.

Lunch with Gai Waterhouse at Bacash. Half a dozen oysters; scallops for Gai and John Dory for the journalist. Credit: Simon Schluter

The napkin stays until she has finished her entree dish of scallops with Jerusalem artichoke puree, which completes her frugal lunch, with dinner plans restricting an exploration of the dessert offering.

The moment the plates are removed, Waterhouse is reapplying her lipstick. Appearances count. As an ambassador for the Victoria Racing Club she would prefer not to represent the midriffs seen on women at Flemington Racecourse.

“I think that you have to have a standard. When they brought in shorts over the Spring Carnival last year, I thought that was silly and unnecessary. You know, there are days for that every other day of the year. But over the carnival, there should be a dress standard.

“The races are the only place outside of going to a wedding or a funeral where women can go and dress up and feel completely comfortable.”

Waterhouse’s impeccable dress sense is well-documented. She primarily shops while travelling, relying on her own taste rather than hired stylists.

When she commissioned a hat from Queen Camilla’s favourite milliner Philip Treacy, she shocked the Irishman with her independent approach to dressing.

“He said I was the only woman who had been in who didn’t have a stylist.”

Waterhouse’s interest in fashion extends beyond the wardrobe, having recently completed Amy Odell’s biography Anna about US Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

Comparisons between the women go beyond chic bobs and savouring the fashion of swinging London in the ’70s.

“What people underestimate about Anna is that she’s driven. People say getting up the ladder’s hard. I say staying at the top of the ladder’s harder. To stay at the top over decade after decade, as I’ve been able to do and she’s been able to do it, takes a special sort of person.”

Like Wintour, Waterhouse’s confidence asserting opinions could be misconstrued as aggressive, but everything is delivered politely, with charm. That charm becomes girlish at the mention of her husband Robbie.

“Rob does everything differently to anyone else I know,” she says. “He had made a larger version of my Order of Australia because they are actually so small.

“Before you arrived I thought I’d lost it. I was out on the pavement, like I was looking for cigarettes.”

The pin was eventually found beneath the collar of Waterhouse’s embroidered denim coat.

Rob is tucked away in another corner of the restaurant immersed in a newspaper, with expertly polished Italian leather shoes that match his wife’s superior style. With a discreet nod, he is ready to escort his wife to their Melbourne apartment before the next event.

Gai Waterhouse before last year’s Melbourne Cup.Credit: Justin McManus

“In Sydney, we live at Balmoral, and we’re on the beach and I go swimming every morning. So in Melbourne, I’ve got a different lifestyle. We are down here for almost all spring. I love Flemington. I love being part of their family. I feel very much it is family.”

A hint of steel returns to Waterhouse’s voice when asked where she will be at Flemington.

“I’d like to be with the winner’s circle on the first Tuesday in November,” she says. “No, I’d love to be there.”

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