WINX HAD LEFT BEHIND a long list of historical greats as she continued her seemingly unstoppable surge. Now ahead were two of the oldest feats in the books. And another white-knuckle ride up the Randwick straight.
Before Black Caviar smashed everything, the nineteen-win streaks of Desert Gold and Gloaming had been thought untouchable. Like Black Caviar and Winx, the pair had come along in quick succession, almost a century earlier.
Desert Gold, a bay mare fittingly by All Black, lifted New Zealanders’ spirits through the Great War. From fifty-nine starts between 1914 and 1920, she won thirty-six, from 800 metres to 2800 metres, and placed eighteen times. A bold front-runner known for great determination, she won nineteen in a row at home from her two-year-old to her four-year-old season. She later had ten starts in Australia, winning four in Melbourne and Sydney, including what’s now the Group 1 All Aged Stakes at Randwick. At six, she claimed another major home win in the Taranaki Stakes, defeating a promising three-year-old gelding called Gloaming.
A large bay with an enormous stride, Gloaming would come to be overshadowed by the likes of Carbine and Phar Lap, who raced either side of his era, but nevertheless he was a remarkable champion. Bred in Victoria but sold to New Zealand interests, he made fifteen crossings of the Tasman in a lengthy career of sixty-seven races. He won fifty-seven of them — from 800 metres to 2400 metres — and placed second nine times. Commemorated in Rosehill’s Gloaming Stakes, the gelding’s nineteen wins unbroken from ages four to six began with his first of three wins in Randwick’s prestigious Craven Plate, before the last eighteen on the trot in New Zealand. Even as a nine-year-old, Gloaming won eight of ten starts, half of them in Australia, before retiring as Australasia’s highest stakes-winner with a princely £43,100.
As great as Gloaming and Desert Gold were, their streaks were recorded predominantly in pre-1930 New Zealand; matching their number in modern Australia counts as a far stiffer challenge. Neatly, Winx would strive to do it in the race Gloaming won on debut ninety-nine years earlier — on Winx’s birth date of 14 September, in fact — the Chelmsford Stakes. Successive win number nineteen for Winx would also match the streak of the galloper Americans hold as the finest mare of modern times, Zenyatta.
As Winx prepared to meet this challenge, cries were growing in Australia that the World Thoroughbred Rankings were bunk. Winx was still second with a 132 rating, behind Arrogate on 134. The American dirt-tracker’s high mark had been earned with two top-level wins in California and Dubai in early 2017. But he’d resumed moderately in the U.S. summer, with a fourth — of five — at Group 2, and a second in a Group 1 to stablemate Collected.
Waller watched the second defeat from home on the Monday morning after the Warwick Stakes, and sent a text: ‘Congratulations on the win and Arrogate went better.’ The message went to the two horses’ trainer, Bob Baffert, with whom Waller had struck up a friendship after meeting him at the World Racehorse Awards seven months earlier. Any rankings controversy wasn’t felt by the two horsemen. Baffert had sent Waller a text before the Warwick Stakes, saying, ‘good luck I hope everything goes well and how’s the family’.
In Baffert, who in 2015 trained the colt American Pharoah to become the first U.S. Triple Crown winner in thirty-seven years, Waller had found someone who understood his pressures. Baffert said he enjoyed staying up late to watch Winx’s races live on TV.
‘I’m a fan,’ Baffert said in an interview. ‘I follow horses. Like Frankel, I never missed one of his starts, and I don’t miss Winx. Following a horse like Winx or Arrogate is like following Usain Bolt or Tiger Woods. You just want to see them do the spectacular.
‘I know what Chris is going through and I see how emotional he gets after the wins because it is a lot of pressure. You are dealing with greatness.’1
Waller had felt a shuddering feeling of ‘that could’ve been me’ while watching Arrogate lose. ‘With Arrogate, it showed what we are all preparing ourselves for,’ he said.2 Despite Winx being Winx, racing had still left him convinced such a fantasy just couldn’t last forever.
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Despite what the World Thoroughbred Rankings said, few in Australia doubted Winx — the ‘Greatest Show on Turf’ — was, in fact, the ruler of the racing world. Fittingly, since a queen needs her crown, some headgear was about to be added to Winx’s ensemble. And just as the paparazzi love a celebrity ‘gear change’, the media jumped all over the equine empress’s new clothes.
Waller was taking steps to avoid a repeat of the blown Warwick Stakes start. After that race, he had experimented with a barrier blanket, which keeps a horse more cosy and settled in the starting stalls. However, he concluded ear muffs — a covering of wetsuit-like material that blocks around twenty per cent of sound — would be sufficient. Winx had already worn ear muffs in trackwork and on racedays before competing. But while they’d been removed as soon as she left the parade ring, now they would stay on, to better keep her mind on the job.
Winx’s first attempt at the Chelmsford Stakes, a 1600-metre Group 2, in early September loomed as the second race of four in a Cox Plate build-up set to include the George Main Stakes, also over 1600 metres, and another race from Gloaming’s resumé, the 2000-metre Craven Plate.
There were more red flags for the superstitious. Ajax had been dethroned attempting successive win number nineteen when a 40-1 on favourite. And Kingston Town had been brought undone in this race in 1982, attempting his twenty-second straight win on Sydney tracks. It was known to happen.
Though slightly stronger than the Warwick Stakes, the twelve-horse Chelmsford field seemed no barrier to Winx’s march, barring more mayhem at the barriers.
There were some similarities to her previous outing. Winx started $1.09, after being $1.10 the start before. The market suggested a one-horse race, with the next-shortest horses at $26. One was Life Less Ordinary, a Waller-trained imported stayer who’d had a win and three seconds since transferring from England. The other was Red Excitement, a neighbour of Winx’s from Rosehill, from the Gerald Ryan stable. The gelding had been there in the Warwick Stakes, finishing a creditable fourth, less than two lengths behind the showstopping Winx. Though an eight-year-old, he was thought likely to appreciate the extra 200 metres of this race, his best performances having come over the 2000-metre range, but surely not so much that he would trouble Winx.
Also echoing her previous race, Winx had barrier three, just one wider than last time. And, like last start, she’d give her fans cause for enormous anxiety again, when it seemed even the Randwick straight wouldn’t be long enough.
On this occasion, the fault was not hers. In her new black pointy-eared headdress, Winx began well and settled midfield. This time, to his credit, the figure responsible for her troubles was jockey Josh Parr. The experienced rider would attempt a daring, calculated bid to give Red Excitement the biggest headline of his life, by setting out to steal the race at its midway point.
Drawn alongside the great mare in gate five, Parr bounded Red Excitement out of the gates, gave him a slight breather on settling, but then started to increase his pace. It was a subtle and brilliantly executed pulling of the rug. Before anyone realised, he’d strung the field out. After 500 metres, he led by three lengths over long shot Chocante. There was another two lengths back to another roughie in Harper’s Choice, and suddenly a gaping four lengths to the next horse, the $31-chance Sense Of Occasion. Two lengths behind him, almost twelve lengths off the lead, Winx sat on the outside of stablemate Who Shot Thebarman.
Steadily, the alarm grew across the course. This was no tearaway speedy squib in the lead, no impetuous pacesetter. Red Excitement wasn’t Kingston Town, but with a lead this vast he might not need to be. In no breakneck fashion, he’d pushed out in front, then extended his lead under careful control from Parr. He was no doubt counting the seconds in his head to measure his mount’s pace, ensuring he didn’t overwork him, in hope he wouldn’t run out of puff until a metre after the line.
By the 600, Red Excitement was eight lengths out on his own, with most expecting a good deal of run still in his legs. The crowd steeled themselves for a rude dethroning.
Behind, way behind, Bowman looked ahead and realised Winx again had a job on her hands to maintain her streak — once again in a Group 2 at Randwick. It was like a recurring nightmare. He’d later admit this one was far more worrying than the first.
He set out after the leader. Though now fourth entering the straight, he was still eight lengths off Red Excitement. And while Kerrin McEvoy had, at this stage two weeks earlier, pulled out all the stops on Foxplay, Parr still hadn’t got to work in this latest plot to stop Winx.
At the 300, Parr grew more urgent, realising the whip would be needed to get every last drop out of Red Excitement. Winx had moved to second, in what seemed full flight, but was still seven lengths behind. Bowman went for his whip, but, at this of all times, he dropped it. He’d have to rely on hands and heels to avert a massive upset. Red Excitement was starting to shorten stride, but only slightly. With the crowd roaring and just 150 metres to go, Winx was still four lengths astern.
But now, just as the doubts were growing, here it was again — that ability, despite the greatest stress, to quicken stride, to reach a new level. Ridden urgently, this unstoppable mare chewed up the turf. She drew alongside Red Excitement, then put an end to his bold adventure. With 40 metres left, though still only level, Bowman was able to ease up. Winx’s momentum carried her to a one-length victory, her awestruck jockey pumping his fist in celebration. She’d flown her last 600 metres in 33.10 seconds.
Around the course, racegoers gasped and shook their heads in amazement again over the nation’s horse. The winner’s stall was pure pandemonium, Kepitis both trying to calm her pounding heart while throwing hugs around her husband, her daughters and anyone within reach. With her husband still emerging from his private ‘bunker’, Stephanie Waller simply bounced up and down.
‘I wasn’t worried last start, but today I really was,’ said Bowman. ‘When I got going before the 800, I looked up and thought: “Jeez, that is a long way to make up.” Still on the turn, I was thinking I had a lot to do. Hell, I had a lot to do at the 200. When she hit the afterburners at the 150-metre mark — I can’t explain the feeling.
‘Real good horses wouldn’t have won. She is much better than that. Everything that she does is incredible. I’m lost for words.’
Winx had carted her crew through another darkly coloured minefield, putting Red Excitement behind her and leaving only Black Caviar ahead on the winning-streak list. This time, there was no mere wobbling of the lip from Waller. He’d again seen his mare turn an incredible trick to stop the curtain falling on this continuing dream. As he fronted the media, he broke down in tears.
‘I just wanted to see her come out of the barriers okay. You can see what she means to me, and that’s just the start of the race,’ he said, grappling once more with cogency, and mobbed again by a delirious Kepitis and Peter Tighe.
‘I believed in her,’ Kepitis said, ‘because she does the impossible.’
With Winx having matched the nineteen straight victories of Gloaming and Desert Gold, Waller was asked about the only streak now ahead, Black Caviar’s twenty-five. ‘Black Caviar was unbeaten. That’s just amazing. How she did that I do not know,’ he said. ‘Winx has her own history with Cox Plates and so many races, whatever happens is a bonus. She’s our darling and she’s done all she needs to do.’
As the exhilaration around Winx’s effort bubbled, Waller found time to congratulate fellow Rosehill trainer Gerald Ryan and Parr for their tactics with Red Excitement.
‘I thought I had pulled it off,’ said Parr on dismounting from his exhausted gelding. ‘Today he has just run into possibly the greatest ever.’