A Lady And A Champ

Racing legend Gai Waterhouse and her daughter, Kate, invite Genevieve Gannon onto the family farm to talk about success, style and why family will always come first.

- Genevieve Gannon

Gai Waterhouse is drinking tea from a dainty cup with a gold trim as she oversees the symphony of activity in her NSW farm homestead. There’s the percussion of tiny feet in pink suede Mary Janes as granddaughters Sophia, four, and Grace, two, run around the dining room table, the clippety-clap of make-up containers being flipped open and shut as colour is applied to daughter Kate’s eyelids, and a general hubbub as staff employed by the Waterhouses and The Women’s Weekly work to squeeze a photoshoot into Gai’s busy schedule. The legendary horse trainer has to be on a flight at 11. But right now her main concern is that everybody present is warm and well fed. The Alpine sky may be a beautiful spring-time blue, but there’s a chill the wood fire is doing little to dispel. “Make sure you get something to eat,” Gai calls to each crew member by name. “A woman can’t live on toast alone.”

Gai starts her day at 2.15am with a breakfast of fruit before eating a second cooked breakfast later in the morning after pre-dawn track work. She values hard work and has been richly rewarded for her fortitude in a cutthroat industry. “It’s tough. But you’ve got to stick to your guns,” she says.