Waller-Lane in Guineas upset
Private Life steals the show after inch-perfect front-running ride in Caulfield 3YO feature
Champion trainer Chris Waller had another great day at the Sydney main office with a treble on Oct 12, but it was over in Caulfield that he bagged his biggest win with Private Life springing an upset in the A$3 million (S$2.6 million) Group 1 Caulfield Guineas (1,600m).
Joint-fourth with Feroce in the Caulfield Guineas Prelude (1,400m) on Sept 21, the Written Tycoon colt did not have to improve by many lengths to turn the tables on his victor Angel Capital or placegetters Public Attention and Wanaruah, given the first five finished less than 3/4 lengths of each other, and both races were at set-weights.
However, the boom three-year-old Broadsiding gunning for a sixth win in a row for the Godolphin-James Cummings-James McDonald trio, somehow rendered the Prelude form obsolete to most pundits.
But top jockey Damian Lane had not read the script, went in with his “own canoe to paddle” and was repaid for his bold move to go upstream courtesy of a textbook front-running ride on Waller’s $81 (on Singapore tote) chance.
After being snagged back from his wide alley to settle at the rear on the rails, top pick Broadsiding had his job cut out when angled out three wide at the top of the straight in his bid to run Private Life down.
He ran on, but missed a place to bolters Feroce (Billy Egan), whose short-head margin to Private Life stood up to their Prelude dead-heat, and Evaporate (Michael Dee).
The win handed Waller his 167th Group 1 and a third Caulfield Guineas after Press Statement (2015) and The Autumn Sun (2018), and a first for Lane, the most internationally exposed jockey in Australia nowadays, especially in Japan.
“It’s obviously a race with great prestige. I’ve been close a few times, but to win one is a great thrill, just to repay a bit of faith to Chris Waller and (assistant trainer) Charlie Duckworth and the ownership group,” said Lane.
He added that he just rode Private Life for luck, without worrying about Broadsiding’s whereabouts.
“Every horse is beatable. You just go with the mindset of riding your horse the best you can,” he said.
“That’s all you can do. You can only paddle your own canoe and let the rest take care of itself.
“I got this colt close to the line, and was just hoping I’d held on.”
Duckworth confirmed that the parade ring talks were rather fluid before the Group 1 race which had garnered only 11 horses, one of its smallest fields since 2012 when All Too Hard beat Pierro.
“It wasn’t our plan to lead. It just sort of happened the way the race shaped,” said the Englishman.
“We went the way the track bias has been playing today. We always thought he was an elite-level colt and today he proved that.
“I thought his Prelude run was fantastic. When Joao Moreira stepped off, he said it took forever to balance up once he switched leads at the top of the straight.
“That’s why we galloped him here on Tuesday. Damian rode him that day with Osipenko who runs (fifth) in the Toorak.
“It was a massive contributing factor to today’s performance.”
Team Waller certainly did not overlook that of the pilot, who was at a week-to-week Group 1 double for them after taking the Turnbull Stakes aboard Via Sistina on Oct 5.
“You’ve got to have a bit faith in these top-flight jockeys like Damian. He knows the game inside out,” said Duckworth.
“He rode this horse for the first time on Tuesday. He came in with feedback about where he could potentially go, not just his next start, but the start after that.”
The Coolmore-led outfit – which also comprises Sir Peter Vela, the late Laurie Laxon’s partner in Singapore and New Zealand – was not left out in his shout-out.
“Coolmore and their partners are fantastic supporters of Chris and the whole team, whether it’s Flemington, the Gold Coast, Macedon Lodge or Sydney,” he said. “They all play a vital part and make sure we can be successful.”
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