THROUGH FIFTEEN STRAIGHT VICTORIES Winx’s capacity to inspire awe had been as reliable as it was boundless. But could she sustain it? Her next test would be different again, in the 1500-metre George Ryder Stakes.
By mid-March, Sydney’s wet autumn had only become wetter, so much so there was grave doubt about the meeting — Rosehill’s biggest of the year, Golden Slipper Day — going ahead. Finally, it was given the green light after a stewards’ track inspection on race morning. This time it was a heavy 10, as wet as it gets. Rosehill’s premium day was dubbed ‘Golden Flipper Day’, as the swimmers came home one by one, their riders spattered with mud.
Though a Group 1 worth $1 million, the Ryder was meant to be a support act to the big scamper for two-year-olds in the Slipper. But more fans left the course that day abuzz over wrecking ball Winx than She Will Reign, the bargain-basement filly who took the Slipper two races later.
This edition of the Ryder was a serious horse race. Far tougher than the Chipping Norton, it would be rated Australia’s finest contest of 2017, making an IFHA top five that included this lot: the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (rated number one), the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Royal Ascot, the Dubai World Cup and the Breeders’ Cup Classic. The Ryder was the only race of less than 2000 metres in the top nine.
It ranked highly, despite having only seven starters. Hartnell wasn’t there. He went to the race before, the 2000-metre Ranvet, partly due to distance, perhaps also to avoid becoming punch-drunk from his run-ins with Winx. Instead, Winx faced a field of first-class sprinter-milers, including Chautauqua and Le Romain, the world’s equal-fifth rated horses at the time on a mark of 119, and outstanding English rider William Buick’s mount for Godolphin, Hauraki. Rating 112, Hauraki had gone closer to Winx than any horse in the previous twelve months, through his length-and-a-quarter second in the George Main Stakes.
Winx was a national hero, yet there were still some prepared to doubt her before the Ryder. Chautauqua’s rider, Tommy Berry, was one of them. A man well acquainted with Winx, having ridden her in the Phar Lap and Vinery Stud stakes two years earlier, he echoed queries aired through the week by more than one pundit about the types of horses Winx had beaten in her two runs that campaign, saying they’d included several stayers better suited to longer distances.
‘Winx is going to be very hard to beat, but I hate saying “can’t”,’ Berry said. ‘She hasn’t been beaten for a long time and what she’s done in her races has been incredible. But she has been up against some stayers in recent times . . . and she is coming up against a couple of nice sprinter-milers now.’1
‘I don’t think Winx has met a horse like Chautauqua before,’ he said of the much-admired grey swooper, who’d soon be in Australasia’s top-five money list himself. ‘He can run the same sort of sectionals as she does. I know it’s going to be tough, but he is the best horse I’ve ridden and he is going really well. I believe we are going to give her a race.’2
William Buick, who had flown in for the autumn carnival, knew how it felt to confront such a rare sort of horse. Like Hauraki to Winx in the George Main Stakes six months earlier, Buick had come closest to the unbeaten Frankel, a half-length second on the very good Nathaniel in the first of Frankel’s fourteen straight wins. He also rode against him when Frankel blitzed Newmarket’s 2000 Guineas field by six lengths in 2011, and in Frankel’s stunning eleven-length win in the Queen Anne Stakes, which kicked off that titanic Royal Ascot carnival in 2012 also featuring Black Caviar.
‘He was disheartening to ride against. He just killed us,’ Buick said. ‘I was in the 2000 Guineas when he just bolted and I have never seen anything quite like him.’
Buick said he’d watched all of Winx’s wins on TV in England and while ‘excited’ to be merely riding against her, felt Hauraki was ‘there with a chance’.3
Four-year-old gelding Le Romain, with the experienced Glyn Schofield aboard, had won three Group 1s, two over 1600 metres, and scored a thrilling last-start defeat of Chautauqua on a Randwick heavy 10 in the Canterbury Stakes. His impressive form gave trainer Kris Lees the most confidence a trainer could have through Winx-coloured glasses: ‘I guess we’ll be running second if she is at her best,’ he said.4
Winx was inspiring white flags not only from rivals but bookmakers. It was incredible to think, but so soon after Black Caviar had slaughtered them, Winx was doing it again. In fact, the better-than-bank-interest punters were having even more fun with Winx.
For the last fifteen runs of her career, Black Caviar started at between $1.02 and $1.16. Since Winx had become an odds-on commodity after her first Cox Plate, she’d started at an average of $1.43 through ten wins. Such a little difference becomes major when large punters weigh in, like the one who bet $45,000 on Winx to win her second Cox Plate at $1.75 to make $23,000, and another who put $67,000 on her at $1.15 to take out this 2017 Ryder Stakes, in hope of making $10,000. There were many similar bets.
‘I didn’t think there’d be a horse so soon after Black Caviar that would keep me awake at night,’ said CrownBet’s chief executive Matt Tripp, still able to joke through the pain. ‘There’s Winx and then daylight in terms of horses we’ve paid out on. It’s not popular to cheer against her, but she’s the most expensive horse in our history and we’d love a positive result on her.’5
Fat chance. In fact, this amazing mare was about to produce one of the most stunning performances of her career.
Winx was slightly easy in betting, drifting from $1.15 midweek out to $1.30 on raceday before starting at $1.26. There were a few who felt Chautauqua could thwart Winx’s sweet-sixteen party. His price firmed from $8 to $7.50, before the notion was quickly dismissed and he drifted to $9. Le Romain went from $9 to $10.
Alas, the wet weather ensured a crowd of well below the Slipper Day average of around 20,000 made their way to the western Sydney track, whose famous infield gardens and ponds usually provide a welcome, florid contrast to the course’s industrial backdrop of gas tanks and warehouses. On this day, however, all around looked sodden and grey. Of those who did attend, many crowded around Winx’s day stall to watch Waller and his stablehands saddle her up. One old-timer, roughly the same vintage as 86-year-old part-owner Richard Treweeke (who again preferred to watch from home), said what many were thinking: ‘She’s nothing special to look at, but she’s the best I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been coming here since I was six!’
As if to recognise the presence of greatness, the rain that had poured all day ceased — for around five minutes — while the Ryder was run, allowing clearer views to the back of the course and the starting gates. When they opened, Winx settled last of the seven, in less choppy going three off the fence, while long shot Leebaz led Le Romain and Hauraki. Eager to avoid flying mud, Bowman pushed the mare up to fourth on the outside past the 1200, four lengths off the pace as Chautauqua sat a length away, second-last near the rail.
Such boggy inside running had cost the grey dearly when beaten by Le Romain two weeks earlier, so Berry was eager to angle off the fence turning for home, giving his backers more hope. In this field, though, it mattered little. While Berry’s move launched another duel down the straight with Le Romain, by the 350-metre mark Winx had taken control, and in astonishing style.
With Bowman just sitting there as always, Winx fairly exploded into top gear like never before. Really, this time, it wasn’t meant to be like this. The track was an impossible bog, waterlogged and feeling like marshmallow underfoot. Horses in the background were now plodding, visibly struggling to lift their feet out of it. Yet Winx was flying over it, like a hovercraft over water. She was a whir of legs and hooves, the sodden turf mattering not at all as she skipped further and further ahead. It was purely extraordinary.
At the 200, the crowd’s applause in full swing, she’d put four lengths on Le Romain. At the 100, it was six. Like a lad on a motorbike, Bowman might have been opening the throttle to see what this thing could do. Yet he never so much as felt for the whip, and Winx just ran faster, mud shooting behind her, as she bounded away to be 7.3 lengths clear when the destruction stopped. Le Romain, Chautauqua and Hauraki filled the first four.
‘All conditions! All distances! All challengers!’ cried caller Darren Flindell, perfectly summing up this latest, and one of the greatest, of Winx’s victories. Her effort only looked better by assessing the clock.
The last 600 metres of the race — 35.65 seconds — was the equal-fastest closer of the day. It matched that of the open 1200-metre Group 3 on a fairer surface three races earlier, bettered that of the Golden Slipper two races later by 2.5 seconds — or the odd fifteen lengths — and was more than a second faster than Russian Revolution’s finish in the Group 1 Galaxy over 1100 metres. Winx herself clocked easily the fastest last 400 metres of the day, at 22.94 seconds. The effort would earn Winx her best Timeform rating yet of 134, and her equal-best World Thoroughbred Rankings mark of 132.
What Winx was proving able to achieve — regardless of opposition, distance, and acts of God like an autumn deluge — was simply staggering. It just hadn’t been seen before. The previous year, she’d become the first horse to win the Cox Plate, Chipping Norton and Ryder Stakes in the same season. Now she’d done it again. This also made her the first horse to twice complete the Chipping Norton–Ryder double — involving a drop of 100 metres that would often test horses preparing for longer races.
An emotional Waller was able to briefly address reporters. ‘I didn’t expect her to win like that,’ he said, voice cracking and lip trembling again. ‘She’s an amazing horse.’
It wasn’t a Cox Plate. There was little doubt Winx would win. But what had become clear by now, and so moving to watch, was that the man’s soul had been touched, deeply and permanently, by being associated with this historical wonder.
Fans were moved too. Their applause, lumps in the throats, flags and caps said so. But Waller, from humble beginnings in rural New Zealand, was in the eye of this utterly game-changing global phenomenon. Its effect on his being was palpable. In his one journey through this world, in his life’s calling, he had found perfection. Who could ever hope for more?
In a sense, Waller was still grappling with what exactly he had. In a reflective interview a few days later, he said, ‘I’m actually looking forward to one day watching all these wins on my own. I think it will be then that I will fully realise the privilege it is to have a horse like this.’6
Bowman dismounted after the Ryder to be greeted by Waller, Kepitis and the Tighes. Even they were swapping disbelieving glances. ‘I knew on the way to the barriers she meant business today,’ he said. Not surprisingly, he added that she was in the prime of her career.
The frightening thing was that no one really knew. She was still five months off turning six. She was coming back from spells a little bigger, more muscled, each time. After twenty-six starts, she was still growing mentally as a racehorse, still perfecting her act of being the fastest thing going around racetracks in Australia, and perhaps the world.
Buick added fuel to the ‘take her abroad’ fire when asked how Winx would perform overseas. ‘I think she will do a bit of damage,’ he said, before adding the highest of accolades: ‘She reminds me of Frankel.’7
Schofield, who had ridden the gallant Hay List in three of his four second placings to Black Caviar, had felt a similar deflating feeling this day soon after the home turn.
‘My horse quickened nicely for me and for 100 metres I thought, “I wonder where Winx is?” Then I got my answer. She was four in front,’ said Schofield, who wore a jockey-cam in the race. For an idea of what he was feeling, and a glimpse of Winx’s awesome power, the footage has made its way to YouTube.8
Assessing his continuing ride on a mare who was transcending racing, Bowman said his only worry was one day going to the barriers with his favourite engine beneath him to find she was missing a beat, short of full strength — that, for reasons as hard to explain as her greatness, the power just might not be there. For now, the fear seemed irrational indeed about a mare who’d just joined Manikato, Lonhro and Rough Habit on eleven Group 1s, and charged through the $10-million stakes barrier.
Bowman said he’d pushed Winx, hands and heels, to her stunning margin, knowing she’d be rising from 1500 to 2000 metres at her next start three weeks later, in the $4-million Queen Elizabeth Stakes. It was another Group 1, one of the most prestigious races in the land. Sport at these elite levels is meant to be unpredictable, compelling for its uncertainty. Winx had laid waste to all that. The idea that she might go to Randwick and somehow not win Sydney’s richest race was not just doubtful. It was absurd.