Gai Waterhouse: I’m learning all the time

Gai Waterhouse, the highly successful horse racing trainer also known as the ‘first lady of Australian racing’, has revealed that she is still seeking to improve her training facilities and techniques with information-gathering visits to stables across the globe. 

The 70-year-old was an actress prior to being granted an Australian Jockey Club license in 1992 and made an immediate impression, training her first Group 1 winner later that year as Te Akau Nick won The Metropolitan. 

The daughter of legendary trainer Tommy J. Smith, Waterhouse told Nick Luck on his Luck On Sunday programme that she still recalls the words of her father during these three-month-long sojourns which have of late included visits to Epsom, Kentucky and Hawaii 

She recalled: “My father used to say that ‘You have to go away to see the trees for the forest’. 

“I’ve had a fantastic trip – it's been the trip of a lifetime. Every year we go away for about three months and we learn plenty, we always see things that you don’t always see at home. 

“You come back and see your training establishment in a totally different way – and you’re able to take videos and send the feedback to Adrian [Bott, co-trainer]. 

“I’ve stepped back more in recent years but I still deal with the young horses and work with them on jumping cleanly from the gates – that's so important. 

“Once you’re in a forward position you can take control of the race or you’re much closer to the pace so that you don’t need to make up as much ground to win.” 

Waterhouse became the first Australian female to train the winner of the Melbourne Cup when Fiorente landed the 2013 renewal and credits a lot of her early success as a trainer to her unusual childhood. 

She explained: “I’m an only child and I spent a lot of time with my parents and they were my best friends. 

“I would go to the track and ride my pony in the middle of the racecourse. 

“I was around horses and the stable lads all the time and it was just bred into me – it was an idyllic childhood – and I didn’t go to school until I was seven. 

“You have to entertain yourself and I had to use my imagination – you're not tied into a certain way of doing things – and I think that has helped me a lot.” 

Waterhouse took over her father’s Tulloch Lodge stable in 1994 and remembers that she had to establish firm boundaries with her father in order to pave her own way in the sport. 

She said: “You don’t mean to become competitive but you do. 

“I said to my dad ‘I need to train the horses because if you do it then I'll never know if I’m any good at it’. 

“We had a lot of success but I didn’t want to train until I knew that we could ‘kick goals’. I wanted to make people sit up and pay attention. 

“I was never the first choice for owners but I had to keep battling away and we had a lot of success.”