IT WAS FITTING, GIVEN Winx’s increasingly remarkable story, that the George Ryder Stakes shaped as a lead-up to tick off towards bigger targets in the 2016 autumn. Not only is it a million-dollar race; when the IFHA released its annual rankings of Group 1s at the end of the year, it was rated seventh, three spots behind the Cox Plate and level with France’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, no less. The 1500-metre Ryder was also ranked the world’s top race in the mile range.
One of five Group 1s on Rosehill’s rich Golden Slipper meeting, the Ryder had attracted only eight horses, evidence of a growing factor that a scientist might have titled the ‘Winx Effect’. Under weight-for-age conditions, she was starting to scare rivals away.
But what was there was quality, with five rivals boasting top-level mile wins. There was her Doncaster-winning stablemate Kermadec, a $14 chance with a 113 benchmark rating. Another stablemate was Press Statement. The promising three-year-old colt who’d won the 1600-metre Group 1 Caulfield Guineas was rated 108, and would find support in the ring as a chance to dethrone Winx, being backed from $5 into $4.60. There was another threat in ex-Kiwi Turn Me Loose. The Murray Baker–trained four-year-old stallion had earned a 114 benchmark rating by winning seven of his ten starts; the latest Caulfield’s 1400-metre Futurity Stakes, was his third Group 1.
Winx would also be resuming her rivalry with First Seal. It seemed unfathomable by this stage, perverse even, but that mare had beaten Winx not just once like Gust Of Wind, but in all five meetings between them — six, if you counted their recent barrier trial. Injury problems had enforced a long lay-off since her Winx-slaying 2015 autumn a year earlier, but First Seal entered the Ryder off a Group 2 win and a Group 1 second, rated 109 and at $11.
Mind you, Winx was now rated 118. She was still favourite, as a Cox Plate record-holder would be, but bookmakers were prepared to take her on. They’d perhaps searched hard and found a twinkle of hope in the fact she was dropping from 1600 to 1500 metres. Horses can build up in distances easily enough, but can struggle to drop down, particularly if trained with later and longer targets in mind. Winx opened at $1.80 on the day, was wound out to $2.10, before returning to odds-on and starting $1.90.
First Seal’s trainer John Thompson conceded she’d be meeting a far different foe than before in Winx, but felt there was a genuine chance of an upset.
‘It should be a great contest the way First Seal has come on since her last run,’ Thompson said. ‘My mare has had that long time out with injury, but she is back to her best and I think she will make it interesting.’1
His words showed that, at this relatively early stage, Winx was still thought of as merely mighty, not yet invincible. Even jockey Brenton Avdulla felt he had a chance on a gelding who’d be having his first of many bouts with the mare. The Pat Webster–trained Happy Clapper had won Randwick’s ‘mini major mile’, the Group 2 Villiers Stakes, the previous December, but came into the Ryder a $51 shot. ‘It would be a surprise,’ Avdulla said, ‘but he is ready to run a huge race.’2
Even Waller betrayed how Winx was still seen more as professional than phenomenon. He warned that Press Statement could pose a threat, saying his colt ‘could be the next boom horse that we are eagerly waiting to see’.
Still, calling Winx professional was by no means faint praise. In an insightful radio interview before the Ryder, Waller spoke of how thrilled he was that his once-inconsistent filly had bloomed into a world-class racehorse. He cited the same ‘switched-on’ trait first seen by her breaker Tim Boland three years earlier and — that sign of a good horse — the intelligence of knowing where the line was.
‘She’s fantastic,’ he said. ‘She takes everything very seriously, does everything right and on game day, she’s so zoned in at that winning post it’s not funny. I’m hoping that she can take it to a new level tomorrow.’3
In a portentous sign, two days before the Ryder, Winx’s younger half-brother El Divino — who breeder John Camilleri had decided to race himself — flew the family flag by winning his Gosford debut by five lengths.
And as Winx went after Group 1 number five, in front of a packed crowd for Golden Slipper day, she lit up a grey afternoon at Rosehill by making a mockery of any pre-race suggestions of vulnerability.
Bowman now started to look like he was having some serious fun on the mare. He sat third-last early but, caught three wide, moved up through the gears after 300 metres to slide Winx forward before neatly parking her fourth, one off the fence. Turn Me Loose set an even pace as a two-length leader, with Press Statement well-positioned in fourth on the rail. Winx was to his outside, her nose at the rump of old nemesis First Seal.
For a time in the Rosehill straight, it did appear Winx had a race on her hands. Leaders Turn Me Loose and First Seal drifted wide, pushing Winx five wide, allowing Press Statement to burst on an inside run into the lead, with Kermadec winding up from last on his inside.
Bowman sat quietly till the 300 as Winx joined the lead, easily passing First Seal to put that saga to bed. But with Kermadec finishing strongly under the whip, Bowman was forced to shake up the mare. With one flick of the whip, she ground past Kermadec, and as the crowd began to roar her on she slipped away, winning by a length and a half, with Press Statement completing a Waller trifecta. Fourth spot behind Winx went to First Seal — five times her conqueror, now five lengths behind her.
There was no shame for Kermadec. A tough and seasoned stallion, a dual Group 1–mile winner, he had produced his very best work. As more and more fine horses were finding, that just wasn’t good enough when Winx was around.
For the second time, she’d broken 34 seconds for her last 600 metres, at 33.43. The race’s overall last 600 metres was comfortably the fastest of the day at 33.93 seconds — more than a second faster than in the breakneck Golden Slipper won by Capitalist, and better than the 34.15 seconds of the Group 1 sprinters in the 1100-metre Galaxy, won by Griante.
As Bowman brought the mare back to the mounting yard gate, a jubilant Peter Tighe, smiling from ear to ear, had the honour of leading her in, a rapturous reception swelling up from the crowd as they went to the winner’s stall. Now, a little more with each win, racegoers were coming to realise just how special a horse they had in front of them. They showed it in their applause, their whistles, their hooting and hollering. Some were even moved to tears. Tighe and Kepitis — of course in her lucky outfit — would soon spark another loud ovation as Winx paraded in her victory rug, together holding aloft the gold cup presented to them, like a beaming pair of grand final winners.
Now Waller again found himself in the shoes of Peter Moody from Black Caviar’s time — reminding all that the horses Winx had dispatched were among the best that could be marshalled against her, a reality backed by the race being subsequently given its lofty world ranking.
‘It surprises me beating horses like Press Statement and Kermadec, who are dead-set superstars in their own right, and she has beaten them pretty easily,’ Waller said. ‘She ambled up to them turning for home, which is always a good sign, but it’s hard when you are trying to put away a field like today.’
Similarly, Bowman was starting to enjoy the ride, as Luke Nolen had on Australia’s previous wonder horse.
‘I’ve never ridden a horse that has the crowd behind her like Winx does. It’s very special,’ he said, celebrating before the full house his fiftieth Group 1 success, a Winx win many felt overshadowed the day’s scheduled highlight of the Golden Slipper, won by Capitalist. ‘At the 400, I was confident she was going to win and she left them in her wake the last 100 metres,’ Bowman said. ‘I could enjoy the moment. I could hear the crowd. It was just me and her and it was ever so sweet.’
Bowman still revealed he was nervous before the race ‘because of the field it attracts every year’ as a ‘genuine world-class Group 1 event’. But he’d also found great comfort in Winx’s extraordinary adaptability, perhaps also known as her gearbox.
‘I was a little more apprehensive today than recent starts just because of the draw and the set-up of the race,’ he said. ‘But that is what a horse that’s better than the rest can do. You can make a bit of use of them in two spots. I know she is going to deliver, but I still need to put her in a position where she can.
‘She showed her dominance here this afternoon.’
Still, while Winx was sweeping all before her, greater challenges lay ahead.
***
With what at the time was considered an extraordinary winning streak — eight in a row with five Group 1s — everyone wanted to know about Winx. Even Waller’s young children.
‘They have no idea what horses I train or what I do,’ Waller said of six-year-old Tyler and three-year-old Nikita. ‘But both of them this week have asked about Winx, which blew me away.’4
Even the mainstream non-racing media was getting on board, the Huffington Post’s Anthony Sharwood offering this explanation for the uninitiated: ‘You don’t win the Cox Plate as easily as Winx did. You just don’t.’
He went on: ‘Unlike Australia’s last champion racehorse, Black Caviar, Winx dawdles towards the rear of proceedings early in her races, munching a bit of hay or whatever. Then, as though propelled by a giant spring, she bounds her way past the field as if they’re in slow motion. It’s quite a thing to watch.’5
Waller’s phone, already busy since he was the trainer of a few hundred horses, rang hotter than ever as the media, and by extension the public, wanted to know more about this new horse of the people. How does she do it? What does she eat? And, more fundamentally, what’s she like?
‘She’s an absolute princess,’ Waller said in a post-Ryder interview in April 2016. ‘She’s a lovely, relaxed mare, but she keeps to herself. It doesn’t bother her if she is on her own or if she is next to three horses, but she is alert and ready to do whatever is asked of her. She’s not a horse that lives on adrenaline or nerves, but everything she does, she does with purpose.’6
Though admirers mightn’t want to believe it, there were some who felt she wasn’t the ‘nicest’ of equine personalities. Not snappy, like the aptly named Makybe Diva, but not overly friendly or affectionate. Again, what shone through was she was all about business. She was one hundred per cent racehorse.
‘Winx is not the friendliest horse,’ Peter Tighe said. ‘She’s not a pet. She stays out of your way, doesn’t require attention. When I go and see Winx, she is pure business, all the time.’7
Bowman concurred. On her back, on the way to the barriers or to start trackwork, he didn’t talk to her much or, as some jockeys do, sing to her. He didn’t need to, such was her focus.
‘I don’t talk much to her, I find the less said the better. I give her a pet but she doesn’t appreciate affection. She is there to work and she wants to work and I’d prefer not to interrupt her. She just needs someone to steer her and that’s what I do — jump on, point her in the right direction and she does the rest.’8
Word from the stable was that Winx couldn’t say no to an apple, but only if it was green.9 Trackwork rider Ben Cadden commented on her loud but ‘lovely rhythmic breathing’, which increased with her speed, and said that while she was a professional, she was not above a little horseplay.
‘When you’re riding her, she’ll have a little play or a pig-root,’ Cadden told international website Thoroughbred Racing Commentary. ‘[But] she knows when to push the button. Close to raceday, all she wants to do is run, and she builds up that energy accordingly.
‘She just loves everything about her day-to-day routine — well, except being brushed. She is easy to deal with. She has a lovely temperament. She will let you know when she has had enough and wants her space.’10
It all helped paint a keenly sought picture.
For the first time, the four-year-old daughter of Street Cry and Vegas Showgirl was described as ‘public property’ in the press. And it wasn’t just on-course crowds getting behind her, as Bowman had described, but others who loved the ancient sport of horse racing, and who were moved, uplifted, on recognising greatness.
‘People ring me with stories all the time,’ Tighe said. ‘A mate of mine was at the pub when she won the George Ryder and he said everyone in the bar started applauding from the time she came around the home corner.
‘I led her in for the first time after that race and coming back there were people I had never met who had tears in their eyes. She becomes public property, and I would love to keep the streak going so it stays that way.’11
The streak, of course, was not only building awe, but also pressure.
‘Everything is a risk in racing but this horse has changed things a bit,’ Waller said. ‘She has brought a different perspective to any horse I have trained. It’s not so much prizemoney, or the status of a race now. It is making sure she keeps winning.’12
What had started to unfold, unavoidably, was a repeating, nerve-shredding process that brought acutely felt ranges of emotion for Team Winx.
Sport’s great allure is its capacity to seize the imagination, and few things seize it like a streak. Joe DiMaggio’s hitting record. Arsenal’s unbeaten season. Black Caviar.
But in order to grow, Winx’s precious winning streak had to be risked. Every time. As General George Patton implored of his troops, to experience the exhilaration of victory, you must accept the challenges coming with it. What that meant, in this case, was to risk the depression of defeat.
Waller would start to carry onto racecourses a different kind of tension in his stomach than ever before in his ultra-successful career. He’d already developed a habit of watching races out of the public eye, often alone, on a TV in the trainers’ room or a small office under the grandstand if he could find one, mostly so he could deal with the emotions of a race without being watched. As Winx’s streak built, those sanctuaries became more of a cocoon than ever.
He again had a model in Peter Moody, who, rather than celebrating Black Caviar’s victories, would go home and ‘exhale’ — or collapse more like — on his couch. Waller, like Bowman, would not convey any tension to their horse pre-race. But the growing pressures of the streak might explain why, after so many of Winx’s wins, Waller would face the cameras in such an emotional state, often in tears, as his stress valve released.
Of course, the reality was that Winx was a racehorse, and racehorses race. ‘You can’t keep them in cotton wool and let them run every six months like a heavyweight boxer,’ Waller said. ‘She has got to run every two or three weeks.’
In what no doubt builds the love between trainer and horse, Waller — like Bowman, the owners, the support staff and a growing number of fans — would put his faith in Winx to carry him safely out the other end of this exquisite emotional minefield, time and time again.