Trainer Gai Waterhouse and Bryan Martin launch new syndication project

GAI Waterhouse was 30 minutes late for her own marketing promotion but the media didn’t mind. Just as long as she turns up.

Gai Waterhouse

GAI Waterhouse was 30 minutes late for her own marketing promotion yesterday but the media didn’t mind. Just as long as she turns up, they — we — are usually happy.

There’s always a storyline and this time there were three.

Or four, if you count the reason the coffee, croissants and cupcakes were on offer at her Flemington stables just after dawn — she and racing identity Bryan Martin launched a new syndication project aimed at people looking for a piece of the action on a shoestring budget.

It’s called Living The Dream and at least their timing is good. Her stable star Fiorente has just taken over from Puissance de Lune as the Melbourne Cup favourite, and she might have as many as three or four live chances in the race that has so famously eluded her for two decades.

That’s story one — and it’s good publicity for the new earner.

Story two surfaced an hour before she did when 3AW’s rumour file suggested she was planning to move her leviathanoperation from Sydney to Melbourne. Her response? In a word: coy.

She didn’t say it was true but, pointedly, she didn’t say it wasn’t, either.

“I feel comfortable here. People have always been kind to me. And the dollars are fantastic,” she said.

“We have bought an apartment in Melbourne, I have stables at Flemington and I’ll certainly be spending a lot more time here.

“I’ve got a foot in both places at the moment. Sydney has the volume of my horses and that’s where I am.”

This is an intriguing scenario. Her family and her husband’s family have always been as identifiable with Sydney as the Harbour Bridge, but it is no secret she was mightily miffed by the unpleasant nature and ramifications of her infamous falling-out with another of Sydney racing’s biggest names,John Singleton earlier this year.

She and her son Tom copped plenty of unfriendly fire that would not have been forgot. Plus, she is nothing if not a big fish who likes a big pool and Melbourne is racing’s biggest.

Both the racing industry and the social set would roll out the red carpet for her, and indeed the long-time doyenne of the latter, Lillian Frank, rugged up in a fur coat, was an unusual presence at the stables. Maybe she was on to something before the rumour file.

As for story three, Waterhouse was completely at ease with the surprise decision to dump Fiorente’s jockey Brad Rawiller for Damien Oliver for the Cox Plate and the Cup.

She was at pains not to bag Rawiller, but admitted the horse was being ridden too far back. The “executive decision” by her and the owners had been in the wind for a while, she said.

Fiorente was paraded for the cameras and looked magnificent. As always, Waterhouse was talking him up twenty to the dozen.

“I can’t fault what he’s doing,” she said.

“He’s right up to being the Cup favourite. He has earned it with some tenacious wins and runs.”

The English import “parachuted in”, to use her term, just before the Cup last year and ran second. This year she is doing the same with Tres Blue, hoping to pick up on the French connection established by recent winners American and Dunaden, while Julienas and Glencadam Gold could give her as many as four starters.

That would be her biggest presence so far on Flemington’s big day — enough to make her feel right at home, perhaps.

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