At about 9am on Monday morning, Gai Waterhouse, trainer of Cox Plate favourite Sir Delius, answered the phone while having her nails done at the You Day Spa near the Paris end of Collins Street.
The gregarious septuagenarian admitted to being a bit sleepy as she had already been up for six hours, having attended to her horses at Flemington before returning for the nails appointment near the Spring Street abode that Waterhouse and her husband Rob call home during the spring racing carnival.
“I am having a little bit of beauty treatment and while it’s happening I can feel myself disappearing into another realm,” Waterhouse said.
The exchange is classic Waterhouse who is not only known as an extraordinary trainer but is also racing’s most effervescent personality, needing just a 10-minute power nap to recharge for what lies ahead.
She once told a reporter, who was with her to write a day-in-the-life feature, that “the lady trainer needs to sleep” before dropping off mid-interview as they shared the back of a car taking her to horse sales. When she awoke, she resumed the conversation at a sprinter’s pace.
Named as one of 100 national living treasures in 1997, Waterhouse has trained more than 150 group 1 winners, a Melbourne Cup winner, eight Golden Slipper winners and seven Epsom Handicap winners.
But she has never won the Cox Plate, Australia’s greatest weight-for-age race, which her father Tommy Smith won seven times.
On Saturday Sir Delius represents her latest, and potentially the best yet, chance to fill the place on the mantelpiece that she jokes has been kept vacant for the elusive trophy.
She has trained the great Pierro, Cup winner Fiorente, Alligator Blood and even Manhattan Rain into the placings in the plate, but has never been first across the line in the race which is being run at Flemington this year while Moonee Valley is being rebuilt.
“I would love to be able to win it once, and hopefully many more times before I am pushing up daisies, but you have got to have the horses and I have definitely got the horse to be extremely competitive on Saturday,” Waterhouse said.
That Waterhouse is training the favourite in partnership with Adrian Bott is testament to her determination as she buzzes around racing, as popular and engaging as ever.
On Wednesday at the Geelong Cup, she briefed the owners and jockeys of her two runners, decked out in both the glamorous fashion that defines her and the runners she pragmatically wears now after knee issues.
After being an actor in London and Australia in her 20s, her life flipped from getting home at 3am to getting up at 2.10am every day when she decided to follow her father into training and joined his business. She maintained her love of fashion and the theatre, and was a skilful skier, but her work dominated, and she became a licensed trainer in 1992, a pioneer for many in the racing industry.
Five years ago, she wound the alarm back to 3am during the spring, and a little later in Sydney so that she could maintain the pace of dealing with owners and horses while still being a devoted wife, mother and grandmother. She also takes a midwinter break in Sicily nowadays.
Her husband, and bookmaker, Rob says that despite the public nature of her job and the constant horse talk, her children Kate and Tom and five grandchildren remain her No.1 priority.
Rob, who has been her life partner for nearly half a century, suspects that Waterhouse still doesn’t realise how well she connects with horses.
If he is recommending a horse for her to buy, he always does so knowing they will improve under her care, her reputation for making them rock-hard fit well established.
But her love for horses is best demonstrated, he says, when they are in the country, and she recognises and names a horse she trained 10 years ago and hasn’t seen since they left her stable.
“She is better at remembering horses than people,” he jokes.
That is quite the feat because there are very few owners she doesn’t know by name regardless of their stake in a horse, and her communication skills and willingness to share information has made her a standard-bearer for the modern generation.
TikTok and Instagram are also part of her lingo as she embraces the most modern forms of communication to bring racing to life for those who enjoy the sport and beyond. Having appeared in Doctor Who in 1978, the Australian TV series Young Doctors and had a modelling career, Waterhouse is not afraid of a camera.
The lenses will be trained on her again on Saturday as she helps jockey Craig Williams aboard the six-year-old Sir Delius at around 5pm before the Cox Plate.
Whether the hot pace that has defined Waterhouse’s life will suit Sir Delius when Ciaron Maher’s pair Land Legend and Light Infantry Man take up the running will become evident.
What won’t be in doubt is that Sir Delius will be fit as Waterhouse relayed her thoughts about the horse – who was scratched by stewards from last year’s race after they determined a pre-race scan showed him to be at a heightened risk of injury – while her nails were attended to on Monday.
“He is going very well. He is a very lovely horse to train. He is very contained, and he is very happy, and he is doing very well. I have got him very fit so now it is just a matter of letting the days pass until the Cox Plate,” Waterhouse said.
Her father won the race with Redcraze, Tulloch, Gunsynd, three times with Kingston Town and Red Anchor.
The day the trophy becomes Gai’s may have arrived. If it does, racing will celebrate the moment with joy. But whatever the result, the famous horse trainer will not disappear, determined as ever to compete in the sport she has defined as much as it has defined her.
“Nothing dents my confidence,” she said.
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