Gai Waterhouse on why the Melbourne Cup is still the race to win

Gai Waterhouse remains inspired by her 2013 triumph as she pursues a second Melbourne Cup win, and has already begun planning for next year.

– additional reporting by Xavier Pegum

Gai Waterhouse might be the Melbourne Cup’s greatest modern spruiker.

In an age where manufactured pop-up or slot races with inflated multimillion-dollar temptations scream attention, Waterhouse is adamant nothing’s changed for her.

She maintained each and every year she coveted the Cup more than any other single race on the calendar.

By far.

Waterhouse doesn’t need to look too far for inspiration – it stares back at her most days when she looks at the trophy she won when Fiorente won the 2013 Melbourne Cup.

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“It means everything to me,” Waterhouse said of Cup Week in Melbourne.

“I think it’s still the race to win, that’s why I love it. That’s why I want to win another one.

“I look at it (the 2013 trophy), it gives me inspiration to keep coming back again and again, year after year. I think this is the race that everyone still wants to win.”

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Ambition, drive and an acute sense of history have been a few essential ingredients of Waterhouse’s trailblazing, extraordinary career in racing.

Those same characteristics are still fuelling her ambition to win a second Melbourne Cup, 11 years after Fiorente provided the queen of Australian racing with her one and only success in the race.

Waterhouse trains in partnership with Adrian Bott, and the pair have $34 outsider Just Fine in this year’s race.

But they are already looking ahead to next year … and beyond.

The team has just acquired two European stayers in the Tattersalls Horses In Training sale in the UK who will be aimed at the 2025 Cup, including Delius, a son of the magnificent Frankel, who sold for more than $2.7m, as the quest for more success rolls on.

She adores what the history of the Melbourne Cup has provided racing over more than a century and a half.

“It’s the history of it all. It’s still the race that stops a nation,” she said.

Gai Waterhouse at Derby Day on Saturday. Picture: Vince Caligiuri/Getty Images

In an industry where pedigrees matter, Waterhouse’s connection to the Melbourne Cup stretches back to her famous father, Tommy Smith, who twice won the race, with Toparoa in 1955 and Just A Dash in 1981.

Just A Dash was the first of Lloyd Williams’ record seven Melbourne Cup wins as an owner, and Waterhouse still catches up regularly for lunch with Williams when she is in Melbourne.

“I do catch up with Lloyd regularly, which is very nice,” she said.

“Lloyd got dad to send Just A Dash to Adelaide and he won the Adelaide Cup, which qualified him for the Melbourne Cup. Then dad said: ‘I’ll take the horse back to Sydney’ and Lloyd said ‘No, leave him here with me and I will train him.”

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Her own quest to win the Cup almost came to fruition early in her training career, when her Victoria Derby winner Nothin’ Leica Dane ran second to Doriemus in 1995.

“He was an amazing horse, I was only thinking about him the other day,” Waterhouse said of Nothin’ Leica Dane.

“It’s a travesty that they don’t allow the Derby winner to run in the Cup anymore.”

But Waterhouse’s dream did come true almost 20 years later when Fiorente saluted in the 2013 Melbourne Cup, which she maintains is one of the greatest moments of her life.

“I was so nervous leading up to the race,” she said.

“On the Sunday before the Cup we had so many people at the stables all wanting to see the horse (Fiorente).”

“We were confident he would run well. But we weren’t sure how he was going to cope with all the people on the day.”

Fiorente did more than cope with his date with destiny, he sailed away to win the Cup, and it was a feeling Waterhouse is keen to replicate.

Her runner this year, Just Fine, is a $34 chance, off the back of a poor performance in the Moonee Valley Gold Cup.

Just Fine winning The Bart Cummings last month. Picture: George Sal/Racing Photos via Getty Images

But Waterhouse hopes the seven-year-old stayer can turn his form around at Flemington.

“He had been set for the Cup, and it has happened before, horses have run poorly on different tracks and then run well (at Flemington) in the Cup.”

She said the fact that the My Racehorse microshare syndicate part owns the horse means that there are some battlers in the horse.

“That doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world,” she said.

“You have syndicates in other countries but you do not have syndicates for the everyday person … the guy driving the cab, the woman working behind the Woolies counter.

“These are people who are in Just Fine, that’s the beauty of this horse.”

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Star jockey Jamie Kah, who will ride Ciaron Maher’s Okita Soushi in the Cup, said Waterhouse was an inspiration for her.

“She just has so many stories and so much history on her side,” Kah said of Waterhouse. “She’s been a real trailblazer.

“She was quite funny with me (at the Melbourne Cup Carnival launch last Monday). She cares about everyone else other than herself.

“I was freezing and she took her jacket off to make sure I was OK. She said ‘You’ve got to be right for the Melbourne Cup.’

“She was worried about me, she didn’t want me to get the flu.

“Hopefully one day I can be like her. She is a queen.”

But racing’s queen remains just as competitive and just as driven for success as she ever has been, with Waterhouse already plotting future Cup success with Bott.

The Tattersalls Sales showed that during the week.

Gai Waterhouse holds alot the Melbourne Cup after winning with Fiorente in 2013. Picture: Colleen Petch

First up, the duo bought three-year-old colt The Euphrates for $521,180.

Not long after they returned with the backing of Kiwi heavy hitter Sir Owen Glenn, going on to buy highly-sought after colt Delius for $2,707115.

Delius finished eighth in this year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, while also placing in multiple Group races along with a win at Group 3 level.

While the two imports are set to have a light autumn prep, the ultimate goal is a Melbourne Cup.

“Delius has still got a lot of class with him,” Bott said.

“The Arc is one of Europe’s best races isn’t it.”

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“There’s a great form reference with the Arc and the Cox Plate is another good reference for the Melbourne Cup itself.

“I think if you’re good enough to be competitive in that race then you’ve got the ability to stay, that really seems to be the sweet spot there.”

He said of The Euphrates: “He’s still a young horse relative and lightly raced in that regard, I’d like to think there’s plenty of upside looking at the cup in 12 months time.”

Sydney-based Waterhouse loves nothing better than spending several weeks based in Melbourne each spring.

She’s got plenty of company, including her three-year-old dog, Billy, who accompanies her to track and to stud visits.

“I did bring the pooch,” she said when she arrived at the Tuesday morning gallops where Just Fine went through his paces.

“He is a nice little pooch. They can have a bit of a phobia, a bit of separation anxiety.

“He loves the spring and he loves being in Melbourne.”

Billy won’t be there on Cup Day, though. But he’s in Melbourne until Oaks Day when Gai’s full-time driver Damien Gaffney will drive the dog back to Sydney.

Gai is hoping the stable might have a second Melbourne Cup by then, too.

Originally published as Gai Waterhouse on why the Melbourne Cup is still the race to win