"Fail to report
to the stewards any condition or occurrence that may affect the running of a
horse in a race'' sounds a serious offence.
Yet top Sydney trainer
Gai Waterhouse is found guilty of just that and fined $5000, a week’s pocket money
for her. She was also found guilty of not writing horse treatment in her school notebook
– the one with National Velvet on the cover. That cost her $500 so she might have
to go a few days without a hair-cut.
The charges followed a
problem with More Joyous before the running of the All Aged Stakes on Saturday,
April 27. Easing favourite More Joyous ran second last.
Before the race the
mare's owner John Singleton provoked the inquiry with a public blow-up against Waterhouse
during which he said he had been told by three people the mare could not win. Singleton was fined $15,000 making him roughly three times as naughty
as Waterhouse.
You would think
Waterhouse would be grateful with the result – and perhaps she was – but she
unloaded with a classic spray.
Not fair, she said
about losing her pocket money.
‘The whole hearing is
unfair. I have been treated like a third-rate person and my family has been
dragged through the mud, through the mire.’
Pretty
dramatic that mud-and-mire business if a trifle redundant.
But of course
the former actor is not a third-class citizen. She knows the Queen of The
British Commonwealth, Elizabeth II.
'Even
the Queen says to her racing manager, "What is going on with Gai Waterhouse in
Australia?",' Waterhouse told the inquiry on Monday, Australian time.
Waterhouse
trains one of the Queen’s nags in Australia, or ‘Orsetraylya” as Royal Liz might call
it.
The best riposte
to that Waterhouse umbrage came from a Sydney lawyer who had represented former jockey Allan Robinson
at an earlier stage of the inquiry.
Australian crime-solver Steele Hill takes a break from murder and perfidy to investigate the sighting of Martians by his friend Felicity. This story is from the upcoming Bent Banana Books anthology Serendipity. Please pass on the link to your friends if you enjoy it.
LADY MADONNA MEETS THE MARTIANS
Bernie Dowling
Petrie,
north of Brisbane, winter, 1995
FOUR-year-old
Ryan was teasing his sister, 6, patting her back quickly and repeatedly, as he
had seen a mother do forcefully in the supermarket when her child was choking
on a lolly.
Chloe accepted her brother’s game for a while
before calling for intervention from Mummy. Flick Sailor brushed aside locks of
her long blonde hair from her pretty oval face, revealing creases in her
forehead, marking her 29 years of life in Queensland. ‘Ryan, stop teasing your
sister.’ Felicity, better known as Flick, looked across at her son before
continuing to rearrange a pile of bills, jotting down figures on a notepad and
shaking her head at the impossible financial obligations.
Murphy, Robinson add spice to Waterhouse/Singleton stoush
ACERBIC lawyer Chris Murphy highlighted
today’s racing stewards inquiry as a defamation-free zone where trainer Gai
Waterhouse described his client Alan Robinson as “trumped up little jockey”. Robinson and football legend Andrew Johns will
appear at today’s inquiry to say whether they told owner John Singleton his
mare was “off” and could not win the All Aged Stakes at Randwick.
Singleton said the information initially
came from Waterhouse’s bookmaker son, Tom.
John’s is likely to repudiate
such claims but Robinson with the assistance of lawyer Murphy will maintain
his.
Murphy has already slammed the Waterhouses
after the first day of the inquiry last week.
The snobbery of racing's royal
family (the Waterhouses) .. they turn me sick," Mr Murphy told ABC radio.
He added, ‘Gai is a failed
actress who married a perjurer."
As is their want, the
Waterhouses threatened legal action against Murphy who will enjoy unbridled
freedom on today’s perjury free zone.
Gai
Waterhouse erupts in extraordinary outburst against John Singleton in defence
of her son Tom
We are family
AT the Sydney
racing inquiry trainer Gai Waterhouse berated owner John Singleton for
intemperate language to threaten her career and that of her bookmaker son, Tom.
She proceeded to strafe and possibly down her career with ill-chosen words.
Owners, trainers and jockeys are almost
as crucial to the racing industry as gamblers. Waterhouse showed scant respect
for her complementary industrialists when she said,
“It's a trumped-up little jockey, a brothel owner and a footballer, and
that's it. That’s why we’re here, that’s what our
livelihoods are swinging on in front of you today. They’re the people who are
discrediting my son, my husband, and myself.”
Grammarians and advocates of
indiscriminate language would bristle at little jockey, a reference to retired
jockey Allan Robinson. But grammarians and the politically correct mostly have
not the cash to buy racehorses. Ex-footballer and current TV commentator Andrew
Johns has. So too do many professionals and business people who regard champion
footballers and even jockeys highly, an esteem seemingly not shared by
Waterhouse.
The brothel owner in question
is Eddie Hayson, a big punter who reportedly owes Gai’s son Tom millions of dollars in gambling debts.
Football
Immortal Johns sparked the affair by telling Robinson and Hayson the Singleton
owned, Gai Waterhouse trained mare was “off” and could not win the All Aged
Stakes at Randwick.
Jones, who
said he got the info from Tom Waterhouse, has agreed to front the racing
inquiry on Monday as has Robinson. Hayson has until Friday to agree to
appear.
If he persists to dodge the
investigation, Hayson is likely to be banned from every racetrack in the world,
perhaps for life. That would be a heart-wrenching punishment and he does
not need Gai Waterhouse belittling him on top of it.
The trainer reserved the
unkindest cut of all for owner John Singleton. As well as telling her supposed
mate of 35 years he should have shut up, she offered a comparison to explain
the failure of his much loved mare More Joyous. “Maybe she's a seven-year-old
mare and she's old - like you!'' Waterhouse said.
She knows
full well More Joyous (foaled 20 August 2006)is a 6-year-old. She
probably made the intentional error to grab Singleton’s attention for the barb
to follow.
Singleton
is 71-years-old. Many racehorse owners are around that age, retired and having
fun before they go forever to the spelling paddock in the sky. A lot of owners
will take exception to that Waterhouse remark and I am sure chief steward Ray
Murrihy will mention it in his summation.
It is
ironic that Gai Waterhouse retained a dignified silence before the inquiry
while Singleton and Tom Waterhouse traded verbal slings.
In one day
at the inquiry Waterhouse has blown all her credits of public goodwill.
It would
not surprise me to see her retire or vastly scale down her racing business. The
Gai 58-year-old said too much.
Singo
Waterhouses slug it out and they should let us watch on TV
It's a phar lap to the end of this tail
OWNER John Singleton was
drunk. Racehorse More Joyous was “off” and unfit to run. Trainer Gai Waterhouse
forgot the required paper-work. Someone at a television station helped rugby
league Immortal Andrew Johns with his homework. No one laid a glove on
ever-smiling bookmaker Tom Waterhouse but discussion of his betting records
wait for another today.
Today,
Monday, Australian time, the New South Wales Racing inquiry rose above
salacious expectations reinforcing that racing stewards were spoilsports in not
allowing it to be televised.
So far no one
has dug out any huge scalp but it was satisfying to hear trainer Gai Waterhouse
and her bookmaker son Tom yelling across the stewards’ room that John
Singleton’s drunkenness was the reason they were all there.
The official
reason was Singleton had publicly declared at Randwick racecourse that trainer
Waterhouse had told book maker Waterhouse Singo’s champion mare More Joyous
could not win the All Aged Stakes.
More Joyous
duly vindicated Singo’s prediction to finish second last.
Gai Waterhouse became
indignant during the inquiry in the NSW capital of Sydney. She described
Singleton’s accusations as “outlandish”. When askedwith whom she spoke about More
Joyous's condition, Waterhouse snapped, “What are you implying?” The point of
the question was obvious and unworthy of her umbrage.
The trainer
had to admit an error in that pre-race treatments of More Joyous were not
recorded in the mare’s logbook. This is not as serious a breach as it first
sounds because both the trainer’s and owner’s vets had signed off on the
treatments described as routine. The treatments did not come within the gamut
of the major naughty of not reporting directly to stewards a horse’s illness,
injury or treatment which might affect its performance.
This exchange
between Chief Steward Ray Murrihy puts the issue into perspective.
Waterhouse:
‘‘We never tried to hide anything,”.
Murrihy:
‘‘I’m not suggesting you did, but it’s important those records are accurate.’’
Translate
that into the trainer awaits a hefty fine – hefty by you or my standards, not
so much by those of the cashed-up Waterhouse clan. As with all matters horse
racing, some people were tipped off. Before the inquiry a few reporters said
Waterhouse would be fined. The rest of us could not see why. Now we know.
Mother and
son both accused Singleton of being drunk when he accosted the trainer before t.he
race. The owner said he had had only three beers. An unkinder remark from Gai
Waterhouse was that Singleton had so unsettled More Joyous jockey Nash Rawiller
that he rode a bad race. This was really turning the affair on its head. When
Singleton approached Waterhouse she was discussing riding tactics with
Rawiller. We all saw on television that the jockey looked like he was praying
the earth would open up so he could hide in a hole
But the trainer was on shaky
ground when she said Rawiller had a bad ride as he gave More Joyous the run of
the race behind the leader. The alternative tactic of challenging the front
runner Rain Affair could only have ended in the eventual winner All Too Hard
winning more easily. Singleton said Rawiller had a great ride and I think most
of the racing crowd would agree.
Singleton
seemed to have mellowed at the inquiry, admitting to bookmaker Tom
Waterhouse Johns had told him he planned to back More Joyous. Yet Singo stuck
with the unravelling story that Johns said on the Saturday of the race “the
horse is off”.
“It's
his favourite expression ... (he meant) it's not going to win,” Singleton said.
John’s favourite expression, doesn’t that suggest it was a throwaway line,
apparently first offered by the ex-footballer over many beers at a footy game
on Friday night.
Johns
had recanted but Singleton made light of that “I thought someone's been eating
the dictionary or someone at Channel Nine has been improving his
vocabulary.” To be fair to Johns he does like to introduce a casual
big word into his football commentary and sometimes he gets the meaning right.
You
can’t help but feeling chief steward Murrihy is enjoying himself at this
inquiry. He asked Singo why he had not brought his concerns to the stewards.
“All
I had was hearsay from an ex-jockey and a famous footballer,”Singleton replied.
Kaching! That’s the sound of the steward’s cash register accepting a
substantial fine from the racehorse owner.
Murrihy
even managed to top master of the one-liner, Singo. For the first time,
stewards exercised new-found powers to access telephone calls of the witnesses.
“They do provide an interesting matrix,” Murrihy said. Perhaps he was referring
to The Matrix movies. They were certainly interesting but ultimately
impenetrable as to meaning.
Writing is a glamorous occupation – at
least from the outside. Popular depictions of our profession tend to leave out
all the other stuff that comes with the territory: carpal tunnel syndrome,
liver failure, penury, and madness.
Okay, okay, I jest. I love being a
writer. Sharing stories with the world and getting paid for it is bloody
brilliant. It’s a dream job, and like any profession with a horde of neophytes
seeking to break in, there are plenty of sharks waiting to chew them to bits.
Publishing is a screwed up business.
The often labyrinthine path to success makes it much easier for those with
nefarious intentions to scam the unsuspecting. But it doesn’t help that so many
organizations who claim to help writers, to respect them, to assist them along
the path to publication are actually screwing them over.
Before
the digital revolution made self-publishing viable on a wide scale, the
dividing lines were easier to spot. Traditional publishers paid you if they
wanted to buy the rights to your novel. Self-publishers were people who filled
their garages with books and tried to hawk them at events. And vanity presses
were the scammers, luring the unsuspecting with false promises and roundly
condemned by self-publishers and traditional publishers alike.
Today
it’s very different. The scammy vanity presses are owned by traditional
publishers who are marketing them as the “easy” way to self-publish – when it’s
nothing more than a horrifically expensive and terribly ineffective way to publish
your work, guaranteed to kill your book’s chance of success stone dead, while
emptying your bank account in the process.
Some
of you might think: hey, it’s just business. Caveat emptor and
all that. And don’t these people know how to use Google?
That’s
easy to say from our position of experience. Do you remember how naive you were
at the start? Do you remember just how badly you
wanted to get published? Do you remember the crushing grind of the
query-go-round?
I’m
not surprised people get scammed. When you want something so badly, and you
can’t seem to make progress towards that goal – no matter how hard you work –
you start to go crazy. You get desperate.
And
it’s much harder to tell the scammers from the legitimate organizations when they are owned by the same people.
Take
Penguin-owned Author Solutions, one of the worst vanity presses out there.
Here’s how they hoodwink inexperienced writers into using their horribly
expensive service.
If
you Google a term like “find a publisher” the results are littered with sites
like FindYourPublisher.com (which I’m not going to link to because that will
help their SEO, but you can cut-and-paste that address).
The
website purports to be an independent resource, helping to pair you with the
most suitable publishing company. Or as they put it:
dedicated
to helping both first-time and experienced authors identify the most suitable
indie book publishing company for their book. With the information you provide
about your book and goals, FYP makes a recommendation as to which indie book
publisher has the best publishing package to help you reach your publishing
objectives.
Below
this message is an online questionnaire asking you about your book. When you
have completed that and handed over your phone number, the site makes a
recommendation based on your answers.
Except
the only companies recommended are Trafford, AuthorHouse, Xlibris, and
iUniverse – all of which are scammy vanity presses, all owned by Author
Solutions. And, fitting with the rest of the pattern, FindYourPublisher.com is
just one of many (many!) such sites owned and operated by Author Solutions,
purporting to make independent recommendations, but only recommending Author
Solutions companies.
I
have sympathy for those hoodwinked by awful companies like Author Solutions.
The dividing lines aren’t as obvious as they were. And inexperienced writers
naively assume that a company like Penguin has their best interests at heart.
Maybe it’s the cuddly logo.
Newsflash:
Penguin doesn’t care about writers
When
Penguin bought the world’s biggest vanity
press for $116m last July, many people in the publishing business
gave them a pass. They claimed that Penguin would clean up the cesspool. But
instead Author Solutions CEO Kevin Weiss was given a seat on the Penguin board.
It’s
now almost a year since Penguin bought the company (instead of buying, say,
Goodreads, but I digress). It should be clear to everyone now that Penguin has
no intention of changing Author Solutions’ scammy approach. In fact, Penguin just announced plans to
take the scam global.
Penguin
has been looking under the Author Solutions hood for 10 months now. Its
conclusion was this: we can make this bigger. We can take this scam on the road
and start exploiting writers all over the planet.
And
Penguin is still getting a pass for this
crap.
More
disturbingly, my comment pointing this out appears to have been scrubbed from
The Bookseller, is stuck in the moderation queue on Digital Book World’s piece
(despiteexplicitly stating that they
had posted it).
The
reaction at the London Book Fair was similar. No-one from traditional
publishing wanted to talk about Penguin’s ownership of Author Solutions. No-one
wants to talk about how a supposedly legitimate publisher now owns the most
successful author scamming organization on the planet.
These
guys are probably taking their cue from the New York Times, who won’t mention
anything remotely critical about Author Solutions, but are happy to spend lots
of time showing them in a positive light (like here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).
Writer
Beware
The
Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has done sterling work
over the years warning writers away from people like Author Solutions both on their own site,
and through their industry watchdog Writer Beware.
However,
I would love to see them go one step further.
Remember
those awful Random House
digital-first imprints? Public pressure forced Random House to
change the horribly one-sided terms it was offering writers. That result was
achieved after Writer Beware blogged about it, SFWA president John Scalzi
followed up, and SFWA itself threatened to de-list Random House as a qualifying
market.
What
Author Solutions is doing to writers is far, far worse.
Isn’t
it time to do something about this? Isn’t it time to threaten to de-list
Penguin as a qualifying market if they don’t clean up Author Solutions?
Hands
Up If You Don’t Own A Vanity Press
There’s
only problem with this approach. Where do you stop? Because you would have to
threaten to do the same with all these guys too:
1.
Simon & Schuster hired Author Solutions to run their own scammy vanity press –
Archway Publishing. If that wasn’t enough, they then offered a bounty to
bloggers to lie about the company.
3.
Harlequin, never afraid to turn down a penny, jumped in the game a few years
ago. Author Solutions provided the white-label vanity operation for
them.
If
it was down to me, I would threaten to de-list all these guys until they
cleaned house, but Penguin would be a good start, given they (a) it all comes
back to Author Solutions, (b) Penguin owns Author Solutions, (c) Penguin has
shown no interest in addressing concerns, and (d) Penguin is planning a massive
expansion of the Author Solutions scam.
Writers
Digest & Lulu
I’m
sure Digital Book World’s reluctance to mention the problems with Author
Solutions has nothing to do with the fact that they are owned by F+W Media,
which also owns yet another crappy vanity press – Abbot
Press (which has some of the worst prices out there).
In
a refreshing change of pace, this crappy vanity press is not actually powered
by Author Solutions. Abbot Press is a division of Writers Digest. Yes, that Writers
Digest.
If
that catches you by surprise, I’m sorry to say that Writers Digest went over to
the dark side a few years back, and now spam their subscribers with crap like this.
I’m
sure Author Solutions was disappointed to miss out on that deal but at least
they can console themselves with the new partnership they struck with
Lulu last month to provide premium (i.e. overpriced and ineffective)
marketing services to Lulu customers.
Penguin
think they can continue to ride out the storm, ignoring the criticism and
collecting their ill-gotten gains, but if we make enough noise, they will have
to respond. That starts with sharing this post, or, even better, blogging about
it yourself.
But
it also means reaching out to inexperienced writers and trying to steer them
away from these crooks. We need to get the message out that self-publishing is
not the impossible task it’s painted as. Sarah Woodbury has a helpful post on the basics
here, and I have another here. Feel free to point newbies to them, or
write your own.
Each
time you see an article talking about Author Solutions and not mentioning all
the issues, comment underneath and call them on it. Even if the media don’t
change their one-eyed approach, readers will see the comments.
If
you’re a member of a writers organization like SFWA, RWA, or MWA, ask what they
are doing about Penguin. Ask them why they haven’t threatened to de-list
Penguin. And keep pressing them! The SFWA (and the RWA) were really strong in
response to Random House. We need the same from them again.
150,000
writers have been screwed over already. I think that’s enough. Don’t you?
Thanks
David and here is the ironclad promise of Author Solutions
Gai Waterhouse clams up though the boys
John Singleton Tom Waterhouse and Andrew Johns have their say
Gai Waterhouse was an actor but she was not in this film.
Angelica Huston and John Cusack played Mother and Son
in this one.
The young woman on the right was not one of John Singleton's six wives.
LEADING Australian racehorse trainer Gai Waterhouse has been the darling of television media
for the past two decades. Put a camera in front of Mrs Waterhouse before a big
race meeting, you know you are going to get big smiles and unbridled optimism
that one of her horses will win the big. But not this week. Gai Waterhouse has
clammed up.
In a double whammy of gloom for the television mob, racing stewards have
refused to open up to the cameras Monday’s inquiry into the performance of millionaire mare More Joyous, trained by Waterhouse
until huffed-up owner sacked her – the trainer not the horse.
Stewards
opened an inquiry into the poor performance of More Joyous finished second last
in Saturday's All Aged Stakes at Randwick racecourse.
But even before
the race, an irate Singleton approached an obviously peeved Waterhouse who tried
to ignore Singo’s accusation the trainer’s bookmaker son Tom had told three
people More Joyous was crook and could not win. Singo later said one of the
three was former rugby league champion Andrew Johns.
Tom Waterhouse
went to social media to say Singo was mistaken and he was considering suing him.
Much older Singo repeated his accusations to old media.
Some might
have thought the loquacious Gai would come out swinging in defence
of her son. But Mum’s the word.
This is a
pity. Players in the drama, radio-station owner Singleton and Andrew Johns, are
portrayed in the media as lovable larrikins. But Gai Waterhouse is the most
interesting player in this comedy thriller.
Gai
Waterhouse, 58, is the daughter of all-conquering Randwickracehorse trainer T.J. (Tommy)
Smith. She took up modelling and acting, appearing in the
Australian soap operaThe Young Doctors. As
theyoung and the restless did in those still-swinging seventies, she
moved to London and appeared in theDoctor Who storyThe Invasion of Time.
Gai figured the odds of a successful career in acting and
returned to Australia where she worked in her father’s stable for 15 years.
“After a 15-year apprenticeship with her
father, the legendary TJ Smith, and a prolonged battle with officialdom, Gai
was granted her licence to train thoroughbreds in January 1992.”
She does not expand on the prolonged battle with officialdom,
but some sense of injustice, if not gender bias, seems implied.
It was a case of Gai being punished for the sins of the husband
and his father. Hubby Robbie Waterhouse and Father-in-law Bill, both bookmakers,
had their licences pulled in 1984 for “prior knowledge” of theFine
Cottonring-in.
Perhaps it was in the genes .and Waterhousehas been a
leading trainer for most of the past 30 years.
Gai
Waterhouse has not said a direct word about the subjects of Monday’s inquiry.
Television cameras were on the pair when Singleton gave her a huge verbal serve
before Saturday’s big race. She appeared to not return a word to him.
She is reported
to have had a phone conversation with son Tom, after the races.
It seems to
have gone something like this.
Gai: “What
did you tell people about More Joyous?”
Tom: “Nothing,
I told them nothing, Mum.”
Gai: “Okay.”
End of
conversation.
She was a
guest speaker at the Warrnambool race meeting on
Tuesday but she ignored questions on the brouhaha.
Of course, what the former actor did say has been interpreted
as if they were Shakespearean references to the affair. “Put your head down, keep your bum up, keep your mouth shut and that's the key
to success,” Waterhouse said.
She also said Tom,
as she had done, just wanted to please his father. Wow, was this a reference to
the stoush as a tragic challenge to the Smith and Waterhouse dynasties. Well,
we all know Singo/ Macbeth/ Cassius/ Iago mainly wants to please himself. In
the past he has largely succeeded. Maybe not this time.
Gai Waterhouse have had a great personal and professional relationship for 25 years. They have been seen together at many a garden party...
