Waterhouse backs Hinchinbrook

WATERHOUSE AND SLADE BACK HINCHINBROOK

This filly was one of the standout physicals of the Magic Millions Premier sale and is from the first crop of Hinchinbrook's and is the first foal out of the superb racemare in Saint Minerva.

Hinchinbrook stands at Yarraman Park, who are responsible for current first-season sensation I Am Invincible. Hinchinbrook, like his barn mate looks like he can go the same way judging by the yearlings that have been offered in the public auction ring this year.

Saint Minerva was a good racehorse, winning the Group 3 QTC Grand Prix by six lengths, and the filly is bred on a cross that has already worked before, with stakes winners Eagle Island and Rock Hero both by Fastnet Rock out of Galileo mares.

When Gai inspected this filly at the Magic Millions sales complex earlier in the year she wrote the following comment on the filly, "A well-grown, good, strong filly. She has a good, round shoulder, a well-developed forearm and has good scope.

'"This filly looks a real 2YO type."

NOT ENOUGH? Bruce Slade from Round Table Racing was impressed with the filly and wrote in his Magic Millions catalogue "A beautifully balanced filly who is very strong. She oozes quality and is just an absolute queen."

Saint Minerva is out of the unraced Amicable (by Last Tycoon) and hails from a female line that has produced the 1990 Group 1 AJC Sires' Produce Stakes winner, Rhythmic Charm (by Sackford).

In winning the Sires' Produce Stakes, Rhythmic Charm beat home the VATC Thousand Guineas winner, Whisked and the AJC Spring Champions Stakes winner, St. Jude.

Other good performers out of the family include the VATC Listed Victoria Gold Cup winner, Greenstone Charm (by Green Line Express) and the Group 3 WATC Belmont Sprint winner, Universal Ruler.

The superlatives and the headlines, as deserved as they may be, are not the full story.

The training prowess of Gai Waterhouse is best appreciated by the bare facts and the numbers that support them.

From the time she was granted a trainers’ licence in January, 1992, Waterhouse has been setting the standard for success. Her first winner was Gifted Poet at Hawkesbury in March that same year. Her first Group One win was delivered by Te Akau Nick in October that year and the first of seven Sydney trainers’ premierships came in only her third full season.

Waterhouse has trained an average of 100 winners a year in the 21 years she has been licensed. In the 2002-2003 racing season she had trained 156 winners in Sydney, a record that matched that of her father T J Smith.

The victory of Fiorente in the 2013 Melbourne Cup placed her alongside Bart Cummings as the only trainer to lead in the winners of both that race and Golden Slipper in the same year.

Overreach’s success in the 2013 Slipper was her fifth in the world’s premier juvenile event, a race in which she is the only trainer to have prepared the first three placegetters, a feat achieved in 2001 with Ha Ha, Excellerator and Red Hanigan. Waterhouse has also won seven Doncaster Handicaps, four of them in succession. She has twice trained 11 Group One winners in a season and up to the three-quarter mark of the 2013-2014 racing season her horses had collected 123 Group One wins.

As impressive as the Waterhouse record may be at the upper level, her ability to get returns for owners across the board is an equally significant tribute. With only three months remaining of the 2013-2014 season Waterhouse as saddled 771 runners who have brought home more than $70 million in prizemoney.  Over theis period her 147.5 wins have given her a strike rate of 19.20%, the highest of Australia’s top five trainers and this strike rate has Waterhouse a small margin away from John, Michael and Wayne Hawkes who have the best strike rate of any trainer with more than 400 starters. Her minor placings are coming in at a rate of better than one-in-two, pushing her total runners-to-earners ratio to better than 70%.

And, according to the lady herself, “there’s more where that came from”.