Gai Waterhouse | Gai Waterhouse News 61854 Playing By The Rules

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

Gerringong, Saturday 13th September, Flemington, Race 5: This is an anti ‘playing by the rules’ but the purpose of this piece is to explain why we do what we do, and I thought this was the most interesting case study this week.

At the start of this preparation, Gerringong had placed in Stakes grade in 50% of her lifetime starts without ever winning one. In each of those three races she’s rocketed home from back in the field, so she’s arguably been unlucky not to have won. This has done her rating no favours though, and she was allotted 84 and 86 in Sydney. Our options were to race the boys in a benchmark 88, or step straight back into Stakes grade where she’s poorly weighted. At this time of year, those benchmark races tend to be full of horses preparing to step into Stakes company, and the golden carrot of more Black Type for this mare was too good to pass up.

Given that she was going to be poorly weighted, we wanted to target Melbourne mares races which have historically been more winnable, and she was superb first up when beaten 1.5 lengths by multiple Group 1 winner Magic Time, with only a 3kg difference in weight. On Saturday we had the option of the Group 2 Let’s Elope Stakes over 1400 metres against the girls, or the Listed Tontonan Stakes over the same distance against the boys. Based on the nominations, she rated almost identically in both. In Melbourne you cannot accept in two races, but you can see who is accepting in each race. My initial thoughts were that you go to the Group 2 against the girls if an equal chance in both, but we monitored the acceptances right to the wire and noticed that all the dangers accepted in the mares race, and none accepted in the Tontonan. So we did a swift 180 and accepted there.

She’s never raced over 1400 metres and we felt that was the missing link last preparation, but the races simply weren’t available to her. She’s carrying 5.5kg more than her true weight and racing the boys, but maybe rules are made to be broken.