Waterhouse and Bott still think there is room for improvement

Tulloch Lodge duo Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott believe there is still room for improvement despite being poised to celebrate their best season since launching their training partnership nine years ago.

A double at Canterbury on Wednesday took the pair to 165 wins this season, equalling their previous best mark set in the 2017-18 racing term.

Included in that haul has been six Group 1s, highlighted by Lady Of Camelot’s Golden Slipper triumph and Alligator Blood’s Underwood – Might And Power Stakes double in the spring.

While delighted with the stable’s results, Bott says they won’t be resting on their laurels and will instead look to continue building the quality of their team.

“It’s good to see it all coming to fruition, but there are still areas we want to improve on and areas we think we can, so that’s next year’s challenge,” Bott said.

“There is a good number of winners but also within that, a large majority of them have been in the right races. That has been the key, trying to increase the quality.

“It’s also a reflection of the industry itself, the strength of the prizemoney and no doubt those levels have naturally increased and inflated as well, which helps.”

The postponement of Saturday’s Randwick meeting left Waterhouse and Bott with just one weekend representative in Zoumon, who couldn’t add to their tally of wins when finishing unplaced in the Ipswich Cup.

Bott says they will look to roll out a decent number of runners over the coming weeks and should have a strong squad for the McKell Cup meeting at Rosehill.

“Next Saturday we will have a few more runners,” he said.

“We had quite a few trial last week at Randwick, so we could have a flurry of runners before the end of the season.”

Waterhouse and Bott have five-and-a-half weeks to build on their season tally of winners before the end of the racing term on July 31.

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