A fourth Golden Rose success for Chris Waller takes centre stage in this week’s Run The Numbers, as the champion trainer advanced his total of Group 1 victories to 182, with a first elite victory for Godolphin.
The emergence of the Golden Rose as one of Australia’s most valuable stallion-making races and the rise of Chris Waller as one of nation's premier stallion-making trainers have been very much in parallel.
Waller’s first Group 1 came in 2008, while the first Group 1 Golden Rose was run one year later. Race and training combined in 2013, with future champion Widden stallion Zoustar in 2013. Then followed Arrowfield star The Autumn Sun in 2018, Newgate-owned Militarize in 2023 and now Darley-owned Beiwacht on Saturday.
Turning colts into future stallions has become a big part of Waller’s operation, especially in recent times. Of Waller’s 83 individual Group 1 winners, 17 have retired to stud in either Australia or New Zealand.
Assuming Beiwacht becomes the 18th in time, he would be the third Group 1 winner for Waller to join Darley’s roster, following in the steps of Brazen Beau and Kermadec.
There are also four of Waller’s Group 1 winners active at Coolmore (Private Life, Switzerland, Home Affairs and Shinzo), plus he has representatives at Widden, Arrowfield, Bowness, Brighthill Farm, Novara Park, Westbury Stud and Motree Thoroughbreds.
His focus on the “stallion-making” races has also been pronounced. Since 2021, he has produced the winners of a Golden Slipper, two Golden Roses and two Coolmore Stud Stakes.
But also significant is the diversity of stallion progeny that Waller has won Group 1 winners with, something which always endears a trainer to the big farms.
Bivouac becomes the 66th different sire of a Waller Group 1 winner, a list which also includes his own sire Exceed And Excel (whose daughter September Run was a multiple Group 1 winner), and, of course, his damsire Street Cry, the sire of Winx.
Fastnet Rock has the most individual Waller-trained Group 1 winners with five, Via Sistina, Buckaroo, Unforgotten, Amicus and Comin’ Through, while there are three each by Snitzel, I Am Invincible and Redoute’s Choice.
There are two by Zoustar, the only stallion among the list of 66 sires which Waller also trained, and also two by each of Dane Shadow, Sebring, Savabeel, High Chaparral, Ocean Park and Dansili.
Sires of most Group 1 winners for Chris Waller
While Beiwacht is Waller’s first Group 1 winner for Godolphin, he is far from the first he has trained by a Darley-based stallion. Bivouac is the ninth on that list, joining Street Cry, Lonhro, Teofilo, Night Of Thunder, Cape Cross, Exceed And Excel, Shamardal and Bernardini.
The achievement of training the first Group 1 winner by Bivouac may give Waller some sense of atonement as the star sprinter twice denied the trainer Group 1 wins. He held out the Waller-trained Yes Yes Yes in the Golden Rose in 2019 and also defeated Waller’s champion sprinter Nature Strip in the 2020 VRC Sprint Classic.
The other quirk on Saturday was that Waller quinellaed this year’s edition, matching an achievement by Godolphin’s former trainer James Cummings last year. Team Hawkes did the same thing in 2020, as did Waller in 2018 and Peter Snowden (For Darley/Godolphin) in 2012.
From a Darley perspective, Beiwacht/Bivouac continues the remarkable legacy of the legendary Exceed And Excel, who is also the damsire of runner-up Wodeton and third placed Tempted.
Beiwacht is the 30th male line descendant of Exceed and Excel to win a Group 1 race, while Bivouac becomes the pensioned Darley star’s eighth son to produce a Group 1 winner.
Beiwacht’s debut Group 1 win came in not dissimilar circumstances to Exceed And Excel, who won a 1400m Group 1 in late September in track record time. In Exceed And Excel’s case, it was the race now known as the Sir Rupert Clarke Stakes, and that track record of 1:21.20 at Caulfield still stands.
Coincidentally, that was the previous track record for 1400m at Rosehill until Beiwacht smashed that mark when running 1:20.79.
The time is 1.01s faster than Bivouac ran in winning his edition of the race and 0.67s of a second, or four lengths, quicker than any other Golden Rose winner.
Track records in Group 1 races are a relative rarity. Before Saturday, only two of the 18 track records at Rosehill were set at Group 1 level, Shindig’s 1500m record (1998) and Grand Zulu’s 2400m mark (2004).
Exceed And Excel influence in Golden Rose
