The best thing about working for Gai Waterhouse is that you are, almost automatically, on a winner.The second best thing - or perhaps the worst - is that when you turn one of those Waterhouse winners into a loser, you know exactly where you stand.Fortunately for Nash Rawiller, that doesn't happen terribly often.But when it does, the jockey who two years ago was "doing my best and going nowhere" and who now has one of the best jobs in Australian racing, the experience is enlightening.Waterhouse,

The best thing about working for Gai Waterhouse is that you are, almost automatically, on a winner.

The second best thing - or perhaps the worst - is that when you turn one of those Waterhouse winners into a loser, you know exactly where you stand.

Fortunately for Nash Rawiller, that doesn't happen terribly often.

But when it does, the jockey who two years ago was "doing my best and going nowhere" and who now has one of the best jobs in Australian racing, the experience is enlightening.

Waterhouse, Rawiller says, can deliver a "spray" to rank with the best.

"She can hold her own with the best of them when it comes to giving it to you," Rawiller said.

"But it's very rare.

"She keeps you on your toes, but she's very fair.

"If she's unhappy about something, she'll pull you aside, won't make a big scene in front of everyone, and let you know exactly what she's unhappy with.

"If you get beaten on a horse that should have won, there's no grudge two weeks down the track."

Rawiller joined the Waterhouse team two seasons ago when the champion Sydney trainer turned her back on the ranks of Sydney riders and imported him and fellow Victorian Blake Shinn to steer her winners.

Before moving to Sydney, the 33-year-old had long been regarded as one of Victoria's most talented jockeys.

Rawiller had also carved out a name for himself internationally through his partnership with the outstanding galloper Elvstroem.

At the world's richest race meeting in Dubai in 2004 he outrode some of the best jockeys on the planet to win the Dubai Duty Free with Elvstroem.

Thanks to his association with Elvstroem, Rawiller got the ride on the horse's little brother Haradasun.

But he was replaced on Haradasun during the horse's troubled, final Australian season and his career slipped into neutral.

"I just felt that once Elvstroem retired and I wasn't having a great run with Haradasun ... things didn't really pan out too well there for me," he said.

"I was just ticking along, doing my best and getting nowhere."

It was then that the Waterhouse offer arrived and a new career began.

"When Gai said come up for three months it was the middle of winter anyway and I was pretty stale on it," he said.

"It gave me something to work at."

The job also opened up a side to his life that Rawiller knew he needed to work on.

The jockey who proudly relishes racing's highest pressure situations had a deep fear of the public side of racing.

"Even in Dubai with Elvstroem, the race was never going to be a problem," Rawiller said.

"I've always thrived on pressure ... times when you need to lift and the best has got to come through - they're the days when I really like it.

"But interviews and that sort of stuff, talking to the media, I dreaded it."

In that respect, he couldn't have been more unlike his new boss.

Waterhouse is a media machine, and her new jockey soon realised he would have to smarten up.

"It's been good for me, her personality brings out the best in you," he said.

"She's made me work on that side of it - public relations and all that - so that's been good for me."

Waterhouse also gets plenty of the credit for improving Rawiller's skills in the saddle to the point where he rode 74 winners and finished a close second to his "stablemate" Shinn in last season's Sydney jockeys' premiership

"I'm definitely riding better," he said.

"I'm doing my form better, I'm better away from the track.

"A lot of it's the opportunities, but Gai just brings the best out in everybody.

"It's a great stable to ride for, I love riding there and I love the work.

"I don't think I could do much better anywhere else, that's for sure."

For all that, Rawiller isn't thinking too much about becoming Sydney's number one rider.

"I wouldn't say I wouldn't like to win a premiership," he said.

"But I'd rather ride eight Group One winners than win a premiership ... be leading Group One jockey than premier rider."

To that end, Rawiller will apply all his new-found ambitions and abilities to the Waterhouse-trained second-favourite Dreamscape in Saturday's Group One Caulfield Guineas.

And he doesn't expect he'll need to explain how he got the colt beaten.