Chris Waller cracks racing’s rich list
TRAINER Chris Waller has earned around $2.64 million this season and based on those figures he should have made the top 20 rich list.
Waller earns 10 per cent of all prizemoney won by his horses, but it doesn’t include bonuses from stud deals like that of Brazen Beau earlier this year.
Waller has reached the $1 million mark in the past four seasons, but he claims he doesn’t live the rich-and-famous lifestyle.
“The only thing I’ve done is move from Rosehill to North Parramatta to Baulkham Hills,” Waller said.
“I still remember my first winner. It was a race worth $3000 at Trentham [New Zealand] with a horse called Go Morgan. I got 10 per cent, so that was $300. I was very proud.
“I thought I’d maybe make $2 million during a lifetime of training, not one year.”
Waller is enjoying his life at the moment and we don’t blame him. He doesn’t plan to train in his late eighties like Bart Cummings, but he has made no plans to get it up just yet.
“I’ve got no plans about stopping at all. It’s never entered my mind because I enjoy what I do,” Waller said.
“I don’t ever struggle to get out of bed, even when it’s 3am on a Saturday, and we’ve had the Friday night races at Canterbury.
“I do feel for my family a little bit, and I need to make sure they get more attention than the horses.
“I constantly talk to Gai Waterhouse and bounce questions off her, and she’s always at me about remembering my family. She’s always been a fan of making sure of taking breaks two to three times a year.
“I now take a week off after the Melbourne carnival and a week off after the Sydney autumn. But I do want more time off than just two weeks a year, and I expect my staff to have the same.”
There have been questions about whether Waller’s dominance of racing is good for Sydney, but there is nothing wrong with it in Waller’s eyes.
“I can also see frustrations of trainers. But I’m not taking up spaces in race fields,” Waller said. “Sydney fields are rarely at capacity levels and we don’t stop anyone else from gaining a start.
“We don’t buy all the yearlings, we don’t go to England and buy all the horses. We’ve got a good budget, and we have a valuable portfolio of horses, but there’s nothing stopping the likes of Godolphin doubling their numbers out here, or the next sheik from a Qatar coming out, or the Chinese coming in and really ramping things up.
“There are other trainers with big teams.’’