Gai’s quest for next 2025 Golden Slipper begins

Gai Waterhouse has had plenty to get excited about on Epsom Handicap Day over the years, but it is not just the Group 1s that have had her up and about.

The Hall of Fame trainer gets just as excited about pulling the covers off her juveniles in the Breeders’ Plate and Gimcrack Stakes, both $250,000 Group 3 events over 1000 metres that are the first two-year-old races of the season in Sydney.

Waterhouse and co-trainer Adrian Bott have multiple representation in each event, boasting half the field in the Breeders’ Plate and three runners in the Gimcrack Stakes.

“It is so exciting, it’s like being the mother hen with all the little chicks around,” Waterhouse said.

“You never know where your Golden Slipper horse is going to be.”

Waterhouse has prepared eight of them, many of whom have been seen on what for a long time was Sydney’s premier day of the Spring.

Lady Of Camelot ran fourth in last year’s Gimcrack Stakes before winning the Golden Slipper.

Waterhouse won the Gimcrack Stakes the year before with Lady Of Camelot’s half-sister, Platinum Jubilee, who became her first winner in the fillies’ event.

Epionage last year provided her with her first Breeders’ Plate win in partnership with Bott and sixth win overall, with her previous winners including Sebring, Pierro and Vancouver, who all went on to win the Golden Slipper.

Waterhouse has high hopes for this year’s squad of ‘little chicks’ and she has no doubt where the strength lies.

“The colts, they’re superior from our team,” Waterhouse said.

“They’re very masculine, very gung-ho. I like them.”

Waterhouse and Bott have the most expensive yearling engaged in Saturday’s two-year-old events, $1.55m Inglis Easter yearling Tuscany, who is a brother to Schwarz.

The Zoustar colt showed a good turn of foot under James Mcdonald to win an 850m trial at Randwick on September 23, running 49.11 seconds, which was the equal-fastest time of the day.

“James McDonald was very impressed with him, his time was the fastest and if you’re trying to back a winner with two-year-olds you just go on time, they never fail and he ran the best time,” she said.

Tuscany lines up alongside fellow trial winners North England and King Kirk, sons of first-season sires Farnan and Ole Kirk respectively, with Crown The King (Time To Reign) and Tempestuous (Extreme Choice) Waterhouse and Bott’s other runners.

In the Gimcrack they will be represented by Bellazaine (Zousain), Scrumptious (Tassort) and Voting Rights (Snitzel), who were all placed in trials at Randwick on September 23.