GAI Waterhouse realises she is facing one of her greatest challenges in attempting to qualify three-start Japanese recruit Hush Writer for the Melbourne Cup.

Hush Writer will make his Australian debut over 2040m at The Valley on Saturday after jockey Stephen Baster took him for a familiarisation gallop at the track on Tuesday.

If Waterhouse can qualify the four-year-old stallion for the Melbourne Cup, he’ll be lining up for only his sixth or seventh race start. Waterhouse believes he has the ability to do so.

“He’s a very exciting horse with an amazing turn of foot,” Waterhouse said. “I’ve got one thing to do and that’s to get him qualified for the Melbourne Cup.”

Waterhouse said Hush Writer would back up in The Bart Cummings at Flemington on October 6 to try and win his way into the Melbourne Cup. He is a $51 shot with the TAB.

Waterhouse’s husband, Robbie, bought four weanlings, including Hush Writer, in Japan for Mt Hallowell Stud in Western Australia three years ago.

They then sent him to France to race where he had three runs for a first, second and a third.

At his last start he finished an unlucky third in the Group 2 Prix Hocquart at Chantilly where Waterhouse said she was a certainty beaten. “He won’t be far away on Saturday as he needs to win money to get into other races,” she said.

She was happy with his work at Moonee Valley which was a look and see assignment on Tuesday. “He’s exceedingly light on his feet, almost like a ballet dancer. He won’t be far away,” she said.

Waterhouse pointed out that Hush Writer had the same rating as Fiorente did when he first joined her stable when he ran second in the 2012 Melbourne Cup at his Australia debut.

Fiorente then came out and won the Cup the following year, making Waterhouse the first Australian woman to train a winner in the race.

New Zealand’s Sheila Laxon was the first female trainer to capture the event with Ethereal in 2001.

NO CLEAR TOPWEIGHT FOR MELBOURNE CUP
RACING Victoria chief handicapper Greg Carpenter says there will be some surprises for connections with horses entered in the Melbourne Cup.

Carpenter will release weights for the Cup, and the Caulfield Cup, next Tuesday and said with no natural topweight nominated it leaves him with a difficult task.

He says the absence of Stradivarius and last year’s quinella paring of Rekindling and Johannes Vermeer from the nominations, there is no clear topweight to carry the required 58kg.

“It leaves me in a very challenging situation which I have to work really closely through,” Carpenter told RSN927. “The highest rated horse in the race is Humidor but his record at 2400 metres and beyond isn’t the same at it is as over 2000 metres.

“With no clear topweight of 58kg, what that means is something will have to be topweight when weights come out next Tuesday.

“Most of those horses in the race will have to have an expectation that they’re going to get more weight than they normally would have expected, other than those on the minimum 50kg.”

RV’s general manager International and Racing Operations Paul Bloodworth said the 50 entries for the Melbourne Cup and the 27 in the Caulfield Cup had exceeded expectations.

He is also expecting the house full sign to be displayed in quarantine at Werribee once weights are declared.

Three Charlie Appleby-trained Godolphin horses - Jungle Cat, Folkswood and Blair House - are due to arrive at Werribee on Saturday with two of the trio to run at Caulfield on September 22.

With capacity at Werribee capped at 32 horses, Bloodworth is confident every box will be filled by the time the last shipment of horses arrives next month.

“There’s a little bit of water to go under the bridge but we’ve received a lot of demand for spots out at Werribee and I think we’ll fill every box,” Bloodworth said.