Racing royalty Bart Cummings and Gai Waterhouse. Source: The Daily Telegraph
THEY are giants of racing, but yesterday at Flemington Bart Cummings and Gai Waterhouse were left to answer tough questions about their place within it.
Cummings will turn 85 on Wednesday week and has won the Melbourne Cup 12 times.
Could he ever imagine a day when he would not be here, in the Flemington enclosure on Derby Day, preparing winners?
"I won't be seeing anything when I'm six-foot under, will I?" the master trainer said. "Would I ever think about retiring? I wouldn't think so, no."
Waterhouse is 58 and has never won the Melbourne Cup.
Does she lament her Spring Carnival, fronting race days at Caulfield and Moonee Valley in recent times only to see favourites Pierro and Glencadam Gold fail to deliver? And let's not even mention the More Joyous train crash.
Waterhouse seemed as happy to answer questions about her Melbourne strike-rate as Cummings did about his mortality.
"We won a Group 2," Waterhouse snapped back, referring to Pierro's first-up win at Moonee Valley. "Most of these other buggers haven't won anything.
"I don't know about it being a tough time. You've all got short memories, you journos.
"This carnival goes for a very long time, it's very highly publicised. So you're under the microscope the whole time. That's what people forget. (Flemington trainer) Mike Moroney said to me this morning it's hard to win a race. It's very competitive. These horses are good."
Questions about Waterhouse's decision to chose barrier 11 for More Joyous in the Cox Plate - which proved to be a disaster stroke instead of a masterful one - went down like one of the fillies in the Birdcage who had one champagne too many.
The whisper around is that Waterhouse was simply confused when she drew the widest possible barrier for John Singleton's mare.
Asked if she knew that she was drawing a wide alley, or if she had been confused by what the task was, Waterhouse's reply shed little light.
"I had a task," she said. "I told them if we can't get those barriers, we'll go wide of that. I spoke to them a second before I went up. There wasn't a lot of communication before it."
One more question on the subject and she politely smiled, dismissively waved her finger in a "don't go there, girlfriend" manner and then briskly walked away.
Cummings and Waterhouse have two chances each in Tuesday's Melbourne Cup and if they win, it will be a miracle.
Dare to Dream would have been Cummings' best had he won the Lexus Stakes yesterday. He finished second to Kelinni.
When told the first two past the post in the the Lexus had in previous years earned a Cup start, Cummings quipped: "We better complain then."
That leaves him with Precedence and Sanagas, the German-bred, American-raced horse.
Waterhouse has Caulfield Cup favourite Glencadam Gold and another European import Fiorente.
"This horse that won the Lexus was beaten quite convincingly by Glencadam Gold in the Metropolitan," Waterhouse said. "Glencadam Gold's in the race with a a nice, light weight. And we've got the horse out at Werribee that comes in on Cup day. He's a beautiful horse. I think they've forgotten Fiorente."
No comments:
Post a Comment