Gai Waterhouse | Gai Waterhouse News 57473 Playing By The Rules

Our Racing Manager, Emma Reeves, aids us with programming and identifies who she thinks is the best placed horse each weekend.

Very Sewreel, Saturday 13th January, Flemington, Race 3:

I love the placement of so many of our horses up at the Gold Coast on Saturday and with four of our five horses coming off last start wins (excluding those in The Debut for obvious reasons), I’m confident it could be a day to remember. One thing I cannot control, and my reason for leaving them out of contention here, is how they handle what tends to be a crowded, hot, humid day. It is worth noting that Storm Boy has been up there acclimatising for a month now so don’t let me put any of you off backing him in the big one. Although it looks to be an open race, if I simply focus on our horse, I really like the placement of Very Sewreel on Saturday. She broke her maiden in really gutsy fashion before being somewhat thrown in the deep end against older, more seasoned mares where she was beaten less than a length. This is a great opportunity to win a $150,000 Saturday city class race against three-year-olds which rarely comes up in Sydney, certainly not a benchmark 70, so these types of slightly ‘out of the box’ moves are my favourites. One consideration I had is if she’ll be looking for further third up but I’m hoping that the expansive Flemington track will counteract that. I also find that the pace of the races in Victoria are often slower so if Jye McNeil can bounce her out from barrier 2 and make it a real test, I think this tough filly will be hard to run down.