Australian racing legend Gai Waterhouse is confident multi-million dollar colt Storm Boy can silence his doubters and provide the trainer's first win in Saturday's $20 million The Everest (1200m) at Randwick, the world's richest race on turf.
Waterhouse and co-trainer Adrian Bott will saddle Storm Boy as one of the key chances at odds of around $11 in the most open Everest of the event's seven-year history, and on the first occasion the slot-holder race will have status on the top rung of international race classifications - Group 1.
Storm Boy, a son of US Triple Crown winning stallion Justify and a dam named Pelican, burst onto the scene last summer by winning his first four races.
This sparked a bidding war from the country's largest stud farms to secure him for his post-race breeding career. Global conglomerate Coolmore won out, with a bid that would have risen to $50m if Storm Boy won a suite of important races - including The Everest.
But his bubble burst somewhat when he could manage only third as favourite in the world's richest two-year-old race, the $5m Golden Slipper, and his form having turned three this spring has been patchy.
A dashing front-runner, Storm Boy resumed from his winter break with a breathtaking victory in Rosehill's San Domenico Stakes (1100m), but then faded to finish third in The Run To The Rose (1200m), and fourth in the G1 Golden Rose (1400m).
He'll take on older horses for the first time on Saturday and will benefit from the three-year-olds' small 53kg impost under the race's weight-for-age conditions.
Despite the rise in grade, Waterhouse has backed him to shine, especially being back to his pet distance and drawing an ideal barrier (5) for jockey Brenton Avdulla.
“He’s doing very well, he’s a champion colt, and he’ll be hard to beat,” Waterhouse told AAP.
“I always thought he’d stay further, but we know he can be very decisive and effective over 1200 metres.
“People are quick to write off horses, but I thought his last run was acceptable. The Everest is going to be a different type of race, he’s on his home track, and there’s a lot of pluses.”
Waterhouse has won most of Australia's major races, but The Everest has eluded her.
"It’s a race I’d love to win," she said. "It's a very high prizemoney race, and it’s quite remarkable. It’s earned a big place on the calendar in a short space of time."
With 10 of the 12 runners at odds $16 or shorter, betting is headed by crack sprinter I Wish I Win, at around $6.
The six-year-old gelding has the same trainer-jockey combination who were behind Australia's greatest sprinter Black Caviar, in Peter Moody and Luke Nolen.
A noted swooping finisher, his connections will hope to avoid the sort of home straight traffic he encountered when running a narrow second last year.
“We don’t want to be trapped wide, but at least barrier nine gives us the chance to hopefully not be dictated to by other jockeys like we were last year from barrier one,” co-trainer Katherine Coleman told AAP.
"We’ve all seen what he can do when he comes storming down the outside."
Under The Everest's novel conditions, various entities buy "slots" in the race for $700,000 then seek a horse to fill it, negotiating with the horse's owners how to split the prizemoney. The winner earns $7m.
