LIFE WITH A CHAMPION can fly by, one nerve-wrenching feat of greatness to the next, a whizzing ride on the proverbial emotional roller coaster.
Peter Moody didn’t go over the replays of Black Caviar’s wins until the day she retired. At this point, Chris Waller, too, hadn’t found the time to look back on the epic saga of Winx.
But after her Queen Elizabeth win, there was a rare chance to pause and reflect. With still many racedays ahead of her, Winx was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame, at a ceremony at the Australian Racing Museum in Melbourne, on 18 May 2017.
Selected by a nine-member national panel of esteemed racing experts including journalists and administrators past and present, her induction was an exceptional laurel for a rare racehorse. Winx joined many of the greats whose records she’d been chewing up, like Phar Lap, Tulloch and Kingston Town. But only two horses — Black Caviar and Sunline — had been allowed onto the honour roll while still active, a salute that eluded such worthy inductees as Makybe Diva and Northerly.
‘It’s an accolade for a body of work and just shows where she sits next to those other champions in the Hall of Fame,’ Waller said. ‘Her career has been a bit of a blur, and something like this makes you sit back and realise what she has done and go “Wow”. We are very proud.’1
Peter Tighe, looking back on the day he, his wife, Debbie Kepitis and Richard Treweeke spent what now seemed like a pittance of $230,000 to buy Winx four years earlier, welcomed the award among the mare’s other blinding achievements. He said ‘not in a million years’ could he have envisaged the ride his horse had provided since transforming from a promising youngster to turf superstar.
‘No one can dream that big,’ he said. ‘That’s a dream you just don’t have. We all dream, but you never dream as big as that.’2
Winx was also making the rare transition from a horse to a brand. Her ownership group had sought advice from the connections of Black Caviar, who had trademarked aspects of their champion mare to stop others cashing in. Team Winx had set up its own official website for their champion partly, in Peter Tighe’s words, to ‘try to battle against other people trying to make ends meet out of her’. By now, Winx had 10,000 followers on an unofficial Facebook page, and 3000 followers on an official Twitter account. And a western Sydney car dealership was counting its lucky stars, as it had two years earlier signed Waller as an ambassador, before later similarly signing up Bowman. Thanks to Winx, the dealership’s profile had surged substantially.3
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Winx was in her pantheon and all seemed right with the world, as the mare was prepared for her return to racing late in the winter of 2017. Then suddenly, the planets went off kilter. Her legion of fans stood and braced for an unimaginable calamity.
The first odd sign had come, ironically, in another victory. After fifteen attempts over more than three years, Winx finally won a barrier trial. It came at Randwick in August, with Bowman guiding her to a three-quarter-length win over a field including the handy Happy Clapper and Daysee Doom.
Team Winx saw it as assurance she’d come back well. The superstitious may have detected cause for alarm. Two weeks later, their fears came frighteningly close to realisation. With no warning, and just when it had seemed unbreakable, the fragility of her seventeen-run winning streak was horribly exposed one August afternoon at Randwick.
Like Einstein failing a Sudoku, or Niki Lauda crashing in a car park, Winx’s major blunder came in the most innocuous of settings, the most simple of tasks for the champion. It was the Group 2 Warwick Stakes on 19 August, before the spring had even begun, a 1400-metre race worth just $250,000. Yes, she could match the eighteen successive wins of Ajax, the 1930s champion who triumphed in thirty-six of forty-six starts, including a Cox Plate and winning hat-tricks in what are three modern Group 1s: the Futurity, the Memsie and the Underwood Stakes. Adding some lustre, Winx would also be out to win her second-straight Warwick Stakes in a race now named after Debbie Kepitis’ father, Bob Ingham. But this was supposed to be a mere warm-up, a clearing of the throat, ahead of bigger things this campaign.
Anticipation about this return had risen yet another notch. The media pack at her Thursday morning trackwork was larger than before. Two days later, sport fans tuned in around the country for the start of a tantalising campaign in which Winx would hopefully push her sequence past twenty, and achieve the glorious distinction of becoming only the second horse after Kingston Town to win three Cox Plates.
On a good track at sunny Randwick, Winx went into barrier two a raging $1.10 favourite, with the second-favourite, Foxplay, ridden by Kerrin McEvoy, out at $20. Foxplay was not just a stablemate but a mate, with Waller saying the mare and the filly ‘do everything together’. Foxplay was a Group 1 winner, so too $26-shot Inference. But as a strong crowd trained its eyes on the starting gates, the consensus was this was a fairly standard eight-horse field, and there’d be another fairly standard Winx procession.
Waller may have been the only one with a sense that something was up. He said afterwards that Winx had been edgy on the day, eager for her first-up run. Bowman, however, seemed to think there was nothing untoward about her behaviour. The jockey later recalled she had trotted to the barriers calmly, was relaxed behind the gates and had gone into them with her game face on. He felt Winx was keen to get racing, but that was no different to any other day.
Only this time, what happened was shockingly different. The gates flew open, and the champion missed the start.
Awfully.
In a stark reminder of how even the best horses are unnervingly unpredictable, this greatest of mares didn’t so much miss the start as butcher it completely. Months later, with Winx more seasoned, Bowman would look back on this start as a sign she was still maturing. In any event, once she got into the gates, she became fractious, and when hers opened she simply wasn’t ready. She missed her kick and reared upwards in her stall before Bowman was finally able to get her underway — no less than three lengths behind the second-last horse.
This was a big problem, even for her. Over 2000 metres, even 1600 metres, it would have been excusable, with more time and distance to make up the leeway. But this was 1400 metres. The sprinters around her bounded out of the barriers and flew away, as the immediate alarm in caller Darren Flindell’s voice reflected the size of her task.
‘The mare’s missed the start!’ he cried, in words no doubt echoed not just around the course, but the country.
Bowman got going. When the field settled after 200 metres, Winx was two lengths off second-last. Ecuador took up the running, with Foxplay well positioned in third on the fence. By the 1000, Winx had tacked onto the tail of the field, sitting three-wide. She was only six lengths off the lead, but the pace had been well less than frantic. Turning for home, the leaders would accelerate, with fuel in their tanks. With a race of this tempo, it would be hard enough for any backmarker to overhaul the leaders, let alone one who’d already spent energy to make ground after missing the start by three lengths.
Bowman was staying patient. What else could he do? ‘I couldn’t take off at the 700 to get closer. I would’ve run out of gas,’ he said later.
He was also thinking, calculating, assessing the speed set thus far, and what would be likely later. His mental read-outs weren’t good. He realised that, on this day at Randwick, this historic streak might have reached its end.
The pace quickened.
‘I was a bit worried past the 700, because of the way the track conditions were. They were running really slick times. I was thinking it could be mathematically impossible to catch them,’ he said. ‘But there was nothing I could do about that. I just had to rely on the engine I know is in her. I just had to have confidence in her.’
It was some ask. Rounding the home turn, Ecuador drifted off the fence and Foxplay shot through. Also fresh from a spell and revved up, she was hitting top gear under McEvoy and flying. It was doubtful Bowman could see her. While Winx was making her run — six and seven wide rounding the turn and still last — Foxplay was making hers, kicking for home. Into the straight, they were both at top speed, and Winx was making no impression on the gap between them. Ecuador hadn’t gone away either, building up for a finishing lunge.
The crowd was in near silence. Seasoned race watchers turned to each other with their various blunt dismissals: ‘She’s gone’; ‘Can’t win’; ‘Not even Winx.’
At the 320, Winx was still last. There were still six horses between her and Foxplay. The more important number was seven — seven lengths from first to last. With McEvoy brandishing the whip and Bowman urging with hands and heels, by the 200 Winx had finally begun to make ground, but the gap was still an alarming four lengths, as Ecuador and Red Excitement made their bids between the two stablemates.
As the leaders flew past the 150 at breakneck pace, Winx was still three lengths behind. She had about eight seconds to avert disaster.
And here was where the full extent of her champion qualities was displayed. Or, rather, unleashed.
She knew where Foxplay was. She knew where the post was. She knew what she had to do. If you study a replay now, here’s where you see what the scientists had detected: her ability to increase her stride rate, even in such exhausting home-straight battles. Like flicking an inner switch, the mare pumped her legs faster again, summoning her last bid to catch Foxplay in a now-frantic finish.
Ecuador made another dive, but while the gallant Foxplay had enough to stave him off, out wider The Winx Show was playing. Given a flick with Bowman’s whip at the 75, she’d reached an astonishing speed, bearing down on the line. Foxplay extended again, and, with heads bobbing, the result — and the winning streak — were still in doubt as late as 15 metres before the finish.
But with her unrivalled engine roaring, Winx’s beautiful force was overwhelming. Timing her dive to perfection, she triumphed by a slender half-neck.
Racegoers, rival jockeys and trainers could only sit back and gasp. Again.
‘She is an incredible horse to do that,’ said Ecuador’s Gai Waterhouse, now training in partnership with Adrian Bott. ‘She shouldn’t have won. Those horses in front didn’t stop.’
Waterhouse is known and loved for the odd excitable utterance, but this time she was on the money. And the clock backed her up.
The official last 600 metres of the race came in at 32.93 seconds. It was later found that when Winx reared in the gates, the timing device in her saddlecloth was smashed. That left most to guess, in awe, at what Winx herself would have run for her final three furlongs. Prominent form assessor Vince Accardi soon came to the fore, saying he’d clocked her at a staggering 31.98 seconds. Though sectional records are a recent innovation, it was widely felt this could have been the fastest last 600 metres ever covered in a 1400-metre race at Randwick.
For perspective, when Black Caviar won the 2013 Lightning Stakes, breaking a 31-year-old Flemington track record previously thought untouchable, she closed the last 600 metres in 31.36 seconds. And that was in a straight sprint without a home turn to negotiate. Black Caviar’s total time for that 1000-metre race was 55.42 seconds. Accardi clocked Winx’s last 1000 metres in the Warwick Stakes at 55.18 seconds. Even considering she had a flying start to Black Caviar’s standing start, the times were nothing short of stunning.
Accardi clocked Winx’s last three 200-metre sections at 10.92, 10.36 and 10.70 seconds. To maintain such withering speeds for so long, to chase and persist at a challenge that would have left most horses exhausted halfway down the straight, was truly astounding. Winx had taken all on another wondrous, if nerve-racking, ride. It was perhaps most keenly felt by Kepitis, who burst into tears at the relief of it all.
Waller, floating in his surreal and most peculiar bubble, had come closer than ever to those perversely opposite sides of the one coin — the anguish of seeing Winx’s streak end, and the pressure release that would bring. Though both were real enough, there was no doubt which side he preferred, as he savoured still more of the scarcely believable from the mare who’d just topped $13 million in prizemoney.
‘I don’t think I have ever had a horse go that quick,’ Waller said. ‘Looking at the times just tells you how good she is, but you just have to look at the replay to know that was very special.
‘When she missed the jump, I wasn’t that worried, but she had to chase a Group 1 horse in Foxplay, which is very good fresh.
‘We know she is going to get beaten one day, but you just don’t want to have excuses. There were none today.’
Showing his faith in the mare, and his own coolness, Bowman said he also was not worried at the start, though he became more concerned when the leaders quickened at the 600. But then, despite how it seemed from the stands, he was relatively calm in the straight.
‘When I got her to the outside . . . and she balanced up, I was pretty confident we were going to win,’ he said. ‘As we went down the straight, she passed the field pretty comfortably. As we got past the pack, I could sense Foxplay and Ecuador were in a bit of a race of their own. Although she really had to get to top gear, she did it comfortably enough.’
He must measure the Randwick straight in millimetres, Bowman.
All the same, he was aware of the gravity of Winx’s effort.
‘It was an incredible performance.’