We have updated our Privacy Policy Please take a moment to review it. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the terms of our updated Privacy Policy.
High Stakes
On sale
29th January 2015
Price: £17.99
Selected:
Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780733632389
When it comes to racing, the name most Australians associate with the racetrack is Waterhouse. This is their compelling story.
HIGH STAKES takes us from Bill Waterhouse’s introduction to the world as a sixteen-year-old, working as a bookmaker for his father in the late thirties – going on to make money both on and off the track – to the headlines caused by his involvement in the notorious Fine Cotton affair in the eighties.
It examines his son Robbie’s rise as a respected bookie and a knowledgeable judge of horses, to his spectacular fall, as a result of that same Fine Cotton affair, which led to a life ban from involvement in the racing industry. While the ban was lifted in 2001, he keeps a low profile these days. As Kennedy reveals, the same cannot be said of Robbie’s wife, Gai, daughter of the legendary horse trainer TJ Smith. In a male-dominated world, she has gone on to rival her father as one of Australia’s best trainers, training horses for a star-studded clientele that has ranged from John Singleton to the Queen of England.
Yet as HIGH STAKES shows, the scandal aside, the marriage between Gai and Robbie was always going to be problematic. As the Sydney Morning Herald put it: ‘It’s not that the Smiths and the Waterhouses were necessarily the Capulets and the Montagues but the country’s leading trainer and the world’s biggest bookmaker were hardly natural kinsfolk either.’
Despite an already colourful history, when their son, Tom, stepped into the family business and became one of the best-known and most controversial bookies the country had ever seen, Kennedy describes how the dramas for the Waterhouse dynasty were only just beginning…
This is the book for anyone who wants to know the inside story of contemporary Australian horse racing, a world where premiers and millionaires rub shoulders with gangsters and girls with fancy hats. It’s a world of passion, action – and very high stakes.
HIGH STAKES takes us from Bill Waterhouse’s introduction to the world as a sixteen-year-old, working as a bookmaker for his father in the late thirties – going on to make money both on and off the track – to the headlines caused by his involvement in the notorious Fine Cotton affair in the eighties.
It examines his son Robbie’s rise as a respected bookie and a knowledgeable judge of horses, to his spectacular fall, as a result of that same Fine Cotton affair, which led to a life ban from involvement in the racing industry. While the ban was lifted in 2001, he keeps a low profile these days. As Kennedy reveals, the same cannot be said of Robbie’s wife, Gai, daughter of the legendary horse trainer TJ Smith. In a male-dominated world, she has gone on to rival her father as one of Australia’s best trainers, training horses for a star-studded clientele that has ranged from John Singleton to the Queen of England.
Yet as HIGH STAKES shows, the scandal aside, the marriage between Gai and Robbie was always going to be problematic. As the Sydney Morning Herald put it: ‘It’s not that the Smiths and the Waterhouses were necessarily the Capulets and the Montagues but the country’s leading trainer and the world’s biggest bookmaker were hardly natural kinsfolk either.’
Despite an already colourful history, when their son, Tom, stepped into the family business and became one of the best-known and most controversial bookies the country had ever seen, Kennedy describes how the dramas for the Waterhouse dynasty were only just beginning…
This is the book for anyone who wants to know the inside story of contemporary Australian horse racing, a world where premiers and millionaires rub shoulders with gangsters and girls with fancy hats. It’s a world of passion, action – and very high stakes.
Newsletter Signup
By clicking ‘Sign Up,’ I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use