‘Looking beyond perfection’ – Chris Waller on the pressure to be the best

The Straight’s Matt Stewart wanted to ask champion trainer Chris Waller about dealing with pressure. What came back was a 26-minute unfiltered voice message reply which sets out the challenge Waller faces every day to meet his own very high standards.     

The complexity of Chris Waller has rarely been laid so bare.

Waller was busy; not a fob-off to a journo with a list of questions, but a Waller fact. His days are meticulously structured. There are few spare minutes.

Instead, his EA, Sophie Baker, suggested I email a handful of questions and Chris would do his best.

A day later, Waller texted a 26-minute audio file. It proved for more revelatory than a simple Q and A. It was so compelling as to require a rethink of the format.

The indicator occasionally blinks in the background. Waller on his way from work, driving and reflecting, another day in the life of the deep-thinking king of Australasian racing.

In a clip The Straight will run unedited, with Waller’s permission, as a special edition of the Straight Talk podcast on Tuesday, the champion trainer spoke candidly and insightfully of his steady progress from anonymity to being the most constantly under-pressure trainer of modern times.

He reveals:

• The heartbreak of losing his trailblazing horse, Rangirangdoo, to catastrophic injuries during the running of the 2013 Doomben 10,000. Waller has many horse portraits at the stables, but just one at home. “It takes my breath away as I answer. He died on a racetrack and I never really recovered from it. I just never want that Rangi moment again in my life.”
• That he prays for his horses before every race-day “that they come home safe.”
• The extremes of his race-day nerves. In Winx’s second Cox Plate, a promoter’s dream, she took on Hartnell and Waller admits that he got caught up in it.

“I think was started to feel we needed promote racing a little at the time … it was the clash of the two titans …  I was nervous, I was ready to puke. I just wanted to get the day over.”

• Waller’s coping strategies and weight of expectation. He said that second Cox Plate taught he and Hugh Bowman “a lot more about pressure and what was expected of us” and that included winning Group One races. “We are expected to do it…” propelled by “the pressure to survive, the pressure to be noticed, the pressure to get better horses, better clients.”

• The perceived expectations of others, especially early days as he marched up the trainer’s list. “I felt the pressure and expectation a little, I could hear the voices talking.” He and Bowman came quickly back to earth after Winx’s first Cox Plate, in 2015, turning to Bowman after a bleak Cup week. “maybe we just lost sight of the ball a bit here … “ and realising dominance was expected week in, week out.
• The self-imposed pressure/paranoia to win Group Ones: “You’re almost looking beyond perfection … looking for something that wasn’t there. You don’t back off because the competition’s nipping at your heels.”

“I feel the nerves, I feel the pressure, that constant pressure, it’s there.  You could get coaching for it, have a sports psychologist to help you with it but I think it’s all part it, being a good coach or trainer, is putting yourself in that pressure and thriving on it.”

• His penchant for podcasts as a means of reflection but “you’ve got to be a little bit careful who you listen to and how deep you want to go. It can take you too far.”
• The reality, that “you’re on top only for a short period of time … we won’t be at the top forever.”

There is so much more; the wine he collects far faster than he drinks, the power of sleep, the lifestyle balance provided by family and friends and the universal “you feel like puking some days and you don’t – but you know you’re alive.”

The full clip will be published on The Straight on Tuesday. You can subscribe to the Straight Talk podcast via You Tube, Apple, Spotify or Podbean.

Listen to it all if you can, and get an insight into how Waller, in his own way, handles the pressure of being the best Australian trainer for over a decade.