INTERNATIONAL FEATURE
JULY 9, 2015
Waller comes full circle with ‘Beau’
by Peter Falconer
There is good reason to suggest that the career of Australia’s champion
trainer Chris Waller comes “full circle” when he saddles Brazen Beau
(I Am Invincible) for this weekend’s July Cup (Eng-G1) at Newmarket. Sure, the visiting
horseman may be a complete stranger to the majority in attendance, but it is
undeniable that the nearby Tattersalls sales ground proved to be the springboard for the success he has
achieved on the other side of the world.
These days, the humble New Zealander oversees
Australia’s most successful racing stable by a country mile. And make no mistake about it, the
statement can be substantiated; with the 2014/15 Australian domestic racing season drawing to a close, Waller’s charges have already amassed A$25.6 million in collective earnings, and the figure is still climbing. In comparison, runners trained by his nearest rival — the inimitable Gai Waterhouse — have won little more than half of that sum.
The situation is a far cry from when Waller originally arrived in Sydney during the very last throws of the 1990s. Like many of his Kiwi countrymen before him, the future champion trainer of Australia crossed the Tasman an exceptionally well-grounded individual blessed with a sixth sense around Thoroughbreds.
Unfortunately for Waller, the stark reality of the
situation was that he had no more than a handful of horses to start off with.
Waller’s prospects of developing his original client
base to the extent at which it exists today were extreme to say the least. That was, however,
until he decided to take an inspired course of action. Instead of sticking with
convention by supplementing his fledgling stable with stock sourced from the local yearling
sales, Waller looked to Newmarket, England, to grow his numbers, acquiring
bargain-basement runners in the process of being abandoned by the British racing industry.
Waller’s raids on the Tattersalls Autumn
Horses-in-Training Sale not only transformed his own career, but inadvertently revolutionized Australian
racing. The returns made on his initial purchases proved to be staggering, one prime
example being the rags-to-riches story of Hawk Island.
A gelded son of Hawk Wing of little
consequence in the United Kingdom, Hawk Island was bought by Waller late in 2008 for
a paltry 9,000gns as a maiden performer with net prize money of just
£2,409 from
three starts when trained by the much-respected Newmarket handler Geoff Wragg. By the
time the same horse had run its last race in Waller’s care some three years later, Hawk
Island had evolved into a multiple stakes winner of 10 races with earnings of more
than A$830,000.
Not only did Waller make a common practice of turning mediocre British
performers into very significant money-spinners for their new connections Down
Under, but a long list of gallopers acquired under similar means were also
developed into major pattern race winners. The likes of Foreteller (Dansili),
Moriarty (Clodovil), Stand to Gain (Hawk Wing), My Kingdom Fife (Kingmambo), Beaten Up (Beat Hollow)
and Grand Marshal (Dansili) all saluted at Group 1 level on at least one occasion and are now synonymous with Waller’s rise.
Waller’s profound achievements with tried horses acquired overseas resulted in a sharp upturn in his training fortunes. Paradoxically, they probably also held him back in unearthing horses with Brazen Beau’s profile to a certain degree.
The next phase of Waller’s career likely saw him temporally pigeonholed as a specialist trainer of seasoned runners, and witnessed his numbers swell with domestically owned horses switched from rival stables.
Indeed, his current tally of 47 Group 1 victories is laden with names like Danleigh
(Mujahid), Metal Bender (Danasinga), Albert the Fat (Magic Albert), Shoot Out (High Chaparral), Sacred Falls (O’Reilly) and Boban
(Bernardini); runners originally developed by contemporaries of the trainer.
Throughout this transition, Waller has always been much
more than a racehorse conditioner who just solved other horsemen’s problems. It
is only more recently that he has been afforded more opportunities to develop horses of
Brazen Beau’s ilk.
Alongside the names of the aforementioned Waller stable stars there’s ample evidence of this point. From Triple Honour
(Honours List), his inaugural Group 1 winner back in the 2007/08 season, to Shellscrape (Dane Shadow), Rangirangdoo
(Pentire), Hawkspur (Purrealist), Royal Descent (Redoute’s Choice), Red Tracer (Dane Shadow) and Zoustar (Northern Meteor) in more recent times, Waller has charted their courses from untapped talent to top-flight winner.
Saturday’s July Cup at Newmarket presents Waller with the chance to press the point further and to show just how far his training career has come. No longer
automatically aligned with horses that commenced their competitive days under other regimes before
being given a new lease on life, Waller holds center stage with a colt he started
working on from scratch and developed into a world-class sprinter.