AS you drive from Melbourne Airport towards the city, there's an enormous billboard stretching across the Tullamarine Freeway that cannot be missed.

ANDREW WEBSTER reports for FAIRFAX MEDIA that it invites you to join the Gai Waterhouse Club so you, too, can be “living the dream”.

As Waterhouse entices the good people of Melbourne to buy a piece of her inner-sanctum – for an upfront payment of $3500 – she is ever so close to buying her way to a maiden Melbourne Cup.

Fiorente is the $5 favourite. After his brave run into third place in the Cox Plate on Saturday, it is difficult to fathom any other horse, with a Cup specialist in Damien Oliver aboard, getting past him.

Waterhouse made a late appearance in the Flemington enclosure on Monday morning for the official launch of the carnival. Some had prematurely declared she snubbed the event because Myer is a major sponsor of the Victorian Racing Club, and she's a David Jones ambassador.

Shortly after her fashionably late arrival she was mobbed, and asked what it would mean to have the Cup sitting on her mantelpiece.

“There's a lot of trophies there, but it's the one that's missing,” she smiled. “It would be nice to have it if we could.”

If she did, it would be the completion of a four-year plan to win the race. While others, such as millionaire property tycoon Lloyd Williams, have long obsessed about the two-mile event, Waterhouse became serious the year she did not have a runner.

That's when she ordered husband and bookmaker Robbie to “go find me one”. In other words, find a European stayer that can win the Melbourne Cup.

“I was sitting here four years ago, and I didn't have a runner, and I thought, 'I've got to change things,' ” Waterhouse said. “I went home that afternoon and I said to Rob, 'You've got to do something about it.' He said, 'What about some tried horses?' So he started to source them, and he's been sourcing them since.”

Robbie went and sourced Descarado (which won the Caulfield Cup) and Glencadam Gold (which won the Metropolitan) but Fiorente is the superstar.

The Waterhouses threw the bank – OK, about $1 million, so a fraction of it – to buy the Irish-bred stallion after watching him win at Newmarket in England in July last year.

Robbie had jogged the track that morning, for about 7 kilometres, along the inside rail.

Fiorente won a group 2 race later that day on the outside, where the going was much heavier.

That convinced them to go after Fiorente. It took three months of negotiations, but they finally got the expensive pound of horseflesh they desired.

Waterhouse loved what she saw from her horse in the Cox Plate, along with everyone else, when he hung on courageously despite a long journey from an ugly barrier.

“Such a sustained run,” she said of his third placing behind Shamus Award.

“Working from 1200m out from the winning post, it wasn't a short jab or stab, it was something working up as a crescendo.”

Subsequently, she's never been in the box seat like this before. She's never been in the same suburb as the box seat.

When Te Akau Nick finished second to Vintage Crop in 1993, he was rated a 160-1 shot. When Nothin Leica Dane finished second to Doriemus two years later, he was 16-1. Last year, Fiorente finished second to Green Moon at 40-1.

“I've never had a short-priced favourite in the Cup,” Waterhouse said. “I've never had a favourite. They've all been in double-figure or triple-figure odds. It's nice to have one that's right in the betting.”

Her legion of critics will often point to her lack of success in Melbourne in spring, and while she brushes such barbs aside, others – including her husband – know the Cup is the race she covets the most.

Asked if that brought any added pressure, she laughs. “No, not really,” she said. “I'm used to pressure. I've had favourites in lots of big races. You need to cope with that or you shouldn't be doing it.”

Should she win the Melbourne Cup, she will finally join The Club that houses Bart and Lloyd and even her late father, T.J. Smith, who won the race with Toparoa (1955) and Just a Dash (1981).

And that is a rare club that costs more than $3500 up front to join.

STORY SOURCE: FAIRFAX MEDIA