3 minute read

Timeform list Gai Waterhouse's highest rated racehorses on Timeform ratings.

Inspired by the Group One success of Shout The Bar, a third in as many weeks for champion trainer Gai Waterhouse and her now training partner Adrian Bott, along with this article from Timeform outlining the remarkable list of top racehorses trained by Aidan O'Brien in Ireland we have listed the highest rated racehorses trained by Gai - the Queen of Australian racing. 

1. Pierro (Timeform rating 128)

Few horses could be more typical of the stable than Pierro. Tough, versatile, and a champion two-year-old. Pierro won the Breeders Plate in October before returning to win the Silver Slipper and the Todman before taking out the two-year-old Triple Crown - one of only six to do so and the first since another trained by Waterhouse in Dance Hero. Pierro only got better as the campaign went on with huge timefigures backing up his dominant wins in the Sires (over All Too Hard) and Champagne which sees him the highest rated two-year-old in the modern era judged on Timeform ratings.

All Too Hard turned the tables from the Sires in a high-rating and memorable Caulfield Guineas before they filled the placings in the Cox Plate - Pierro's third place the best finish by a Slipper winner in a Cox Plate alongside Canny Lad and Sky High. He returned in the autumn to win the Canterbury Stakes and the Ryder before going as well as ever when second on heavy ground in the Doncaster, giving Sacred Falls 4kgs and finishing within a length. 

2. More Joyous  (Timeform rating 128) 

Perhaps the most famous to come from the yard, largely owing to the fallout of her defeat in the 2013 All Aged Stakes, but 21 wins prior to that incident had long stamped her papers as one of Gai's greats. At one point that winning record sat at 21 wins from 28 starts with wins in the Doncaster (Gai's seventh in Sydney's biggest mile) and Toorak, under big weights, the highlights. She was a winning machine up to a mile. 

3. Grand Armee (Timeform rating 128) 

Grand Armee won Gai's sixth Doncaster in 2003 but it was his next win 12 months later that most remember. There he spoiled Lonhro's farewell in the Queen Elizabeth - and by six lengths if you don't mind! He backed that up with another demolition job in the race in 2005 having won the Mackinnon by four and the Ranvet by over five lengths in between. When he was on he was on, posting awesome timefigures in that last campaign in particular. It's easy to think that in a race of Gai's greats over 2000m he'd be the one capable of blowing them away. 

4. Juggler (Timeform rating 127) 

All of these horses could be labelled tough but few earned the tag like Juggler. A dozen starts in his three-year-old season identified him as smart, with a Frank Packer Plate romp good enough to see him rated 115, but he was only just warming up. He had another 47 rounds to fight. He started by going toe-to-toe with horses like Saintly, Filante and then onto Octagonal, and four Group 1 wins later he was still there scrapping with Might And Power and at the finish Sunline. 

5. Desert War (Timeform rating 127) 

Desert War won three of his first four and an Epsom at his eighth start but that turned out to be his lone win in a 12-run stretch where he looked to have reached his limit. A second Epsom 12 months on saw him crack through the 120 barrier on Timeform's scale but he backed that up just once in his next 10 starts and again looked to have levelled out. Then in the 2006/7 season he ran above that level nine times in eleven starts, winning three 2000m WFA Group Ones culminating in a smash up of Haradasun in a Queen Elizabeth that saw him rated 127. 

6. All Our Mob (Timeform rating 127) 

All Our Mob joined Gai already rated 125 having won a Stradbroke, and measured up to the flying maching Schillaci, in Queensland for Bryan Guy. Gai quickly had him back at his top, beating Hareeba in a Newmarket, before developing him into a 2000m horse later in life and finding narrow new peaks when second in Saintly's Cox Plate and stiching up Filante in the following week's Mackinnon. He came back and added an All Aged over the mile the following autumn. It's a competitive heat but he may well have been Gai's most versatile. 

7. Nothin' Leica Dane, Fiorente, Dance Hero, Pharaoh, Theseo (Timeform Rating 125)