‘I MEAN IT’S SO . . . unbelievable . . . that it could happen to me.’
Eighty-seven-year-old Richard Treweeke struggled for the words, grappling to articulate how it felt — after so long in racing — to live in the epicentre of a turf saga that had gripped Australia for three incredible years.
‘I’ve had too much experience with horses to know . . .’ He felt for the words again. ‘You don’t have these sort of horses.’1
That Treweeke had come to experience heights known by few in turf history — a type of success, regardless of the endeavour, felt by probably one per cent of humankind — is one of the sweetest layers of icing on the story of Winx.
The six-year-old bay mare, by Street Cry out of Vegas Showgirl, went for her spell in the winter of 2018 — farewelled by Chris Waller’s entire staff — as the winner of twenty-nine of thirty-five starts, with three seconds, and with eighteen Group 1 titles.
She was many lengths clear at the top of the Australasian prizemoney list, with $18,998,425, more than $4 million ahead of second-placed Makybe Diva’s $14,526,685. Sitting eighth in the all-time international money list, she stood a strong chance to rise to third — behind Japanese pair Orfevre and Gentildonna — if she could produce another unbeaten spring culminating in a fourth Cox Plate.
Of course, prizemoney is always growing, so there are better guides to standings in history. We know the cliché. It’s hard to compare champions of different eras, and champions of different distance capabilities, to arrive at a simplistic tag of ‘Best Horse Ever’.
That title has, for any Australian’s lifetime, been automatically conferred on Phar Lap. Others have come close, chiefly Tulloch and Kingston Town. Black Caviar was a phenomenon, but if people insist on finding that ‘BHE’, can we compare the specialist sprinter, who won from 1000 to 1400 metres, to other champions who won at a wide range of distances, like Phar Lap (1200 to 3600 metres), Tulloch (1000 to 3200 metres), Kingston Town (1200 to 3200 metres) and now Winx (1100 to 2200 metres)?
The option is always there to simply marvel and appreciate them all. But, this not satisfying everybody, there are some ways to build an opinion, centring on measuring a champion’s level of dominance over their peers: horses from the same era of training techniques, equine science, and refinement of the thoroughbred breed. You can also consider statistics, qualified comparisons, and the straight-out opinions of seasoned turf experts.
There was Malcolm Johnston, who rode Kingston Town, and said Winx was as good, and the best since him. It’s a view that takes out the likes of Black Caviar, Makybe Diva and Sunline.
There was Dominic Beirne’s ratings database, showing Winx’s finest work, all conditions and rivals considered, was nearly a length more dominant than Black Caviar’s. But that database went back to only 1990, when steroids started to be banned from Australian racing, and thus did not include such greats as Kingston Town, Tulloch and Phar Lap.
There was bookmaker Robbie Waterhouse’s mythical market for the ‘Field Of Dreams’ of post-1960 Cox Plate winners, which had Winx the favourite at $3.20, Tulloch at $3.50 and Kingston Town at $5.50.
Few will have seen both Winx and Phar Lap, and others in between. One who has is the Waterhouse clan’s senior member: Robbie’s father, Bill, who was ninety-six years old at the time of the Queen Elizabeth.
‘She is the best of today,’ the former bookmaking giant said of Winx, ‘and it would be hard to argue that she is not the best, or close to the best, ever.’2
Among the scientific approaches, respected Melbourne analyst Vince Accardi assesses horses internationally using a system of Incremental Velocity Ratings. These measure, in metres per second, how quickly horses are able to travel from one point to another. Finding an average speed for all runners in a race in three key 200-metre sections (early, middle and late), Accardi is able to create a benchmark IVR figure for each race. Winx has shown herself to be so far above this benchmark figure so many times, Accardi has no doubt she deserves to be ranked around the very top.
‘On Winx’s figures, I haven’t seen any horse produce better anywhere in the world,’ said Accardi, who called during the 2018 autumn for Winx to be taken to one of the world’s most prestigious races, the 2400-metre Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp in Paris. ‘If she was to win that, that would just confirm that Winx is every bit as good as Phar Lap.’3
Timeform is an organisation that insists that, despite the cliché, you really can compare champions of different eras. It has been assessing the world’s best horses through a relatively static formula since 1948. It gave Winx her equal-highest performance marker of 134 for her second Queen Elizabeth Stakes win, still short of the 136 figure that had made Black Caviar the world’s equal top-rated mare ever. Timeform has gone back to before its inception to rate a selection of the best Australian horses in history. They are topped by Phar Lap with 141, before Tulloch and Bernborough on 138, and Kingston Town on 137, equal with dual Melbourne Cup winner of the 1930s Peter Pan. Timeform’s highest-rated horse globally has been Frankel, with 147. With Winx being aimed at the 2018 spring, there was a chance, of course, she could rise higher than 134 as her career continued.
Michael Ford, former keeper of the Australian Stud Book and now a retiree and statistical maven, maintains his own set of charts to gauge champion gallopers across the ages. One marker he uses is an American-designed points system recognising performances in black-type races. The placegetters in a Group 1 are allotted six, five and four points; in a Group 2, it’s five, four and three points; down to three, two and one for a Listed race. For horses who raced before the grouping system arrived in 1978, Ford looked at the races they’d contested and ‘grouped’ them according to their 1978 level. To the time of writing — with Winx having just ended her autumn 2018 campaign — the stats made for some impressive reading.
On pure points earned, World War II–era champion High Caste topped the list with 247, ahead of Gloaming with 226. Tulloch and Tranquil Star were next with 223, while Phar Lap was ninth with 200. Winx was twentieth among the greats, with 166.4 That sounds relatively low, but bear in mind that more than one million horses over 160 years were up for assessment, and that Winx had raced 35 times compared with the likes of High Caste (72 starts), Gloaming (67), Tulloch (53), Tranquil Star (111) and Phar Lap (51).
With that relativity in mind, looking at an average of points earned per start revealed a far different picture. Top of the list was Black Caviar, with 125 points from 25 starts for an average of 5.00. Winx was second, her 166 points from 35 races yielding an average of 4.74 points per start, just ahead of the great Ajax with 4.72. Next came Carbine (4.35), Kingston Town (4.34) and Sunline (4.25), ahead of Tulloch (4.21) and Lonhro (4.17). Phar Lap was eleventh with 3.92.
That seems a reasonable guide, but of course much debate exists about what grouping to allocate races won by the champions from before 1978. Also, many group races have been upgraded or downgraded since then. Many important races from before 1978 have disappeared altogether.
In the earlier era, the top echelon of contests were all called ‘Principal Races’, and not split into today’s four tiers. For argument’s sake, we could call them all stakes races, then compare them to today’s stakes races.
Assessing horses who raced 25 or more times, Gloaming ranks first with 38 stakes wins, ahead of Phar Lap with 36, Ajax with 33 and Carbine with 30. But taking stakes wins as a percentage of total starts, the picture changes again: Black Caviar is on top, with 24 out of 25 for 96 per cent. Winx is second, with 27 black-type wins from 35 starts for 77 per cent. Then comes Ajax with 72 per cent, Lonhro and Phar Lap on 71 per cent, Carbine with 70 per cent, and Kingston Town on 66 per cent.
Another guide comes from examining the pure ‘wins from starts’ strike rates of history’s finest. Black Caviar leads that list, of course, with a perfect 100 per cent. Gloaming is second on 85 per cent, with Winx third on 82 per cent, ahead of Ajax on 78.2 per cent, Kingston Town and Carbine on 73.1 per cent, and Phar Lap on 72.5 per cent.
Racing is a game of opinions, of longevity stretching more than three centuries, and of historical and international records that can help, yet not resolve, the perpetual debates about who ranks where.
On most tables, it’s clear the mighty Winx is ‘off the charts’. She will forever rank among the very best handful of gallopers to have thrilled, delighted and enthralled Australia, a nation where horse racing has occupied such an important place in the national psyche for two centuries, or virtually since European settlement.
So high is Winx’s standing, after she’d matched Black Caviar for successive wins, she matched her again by having a Group 1 race named in her honour while still racing. Ironically, the race in which her winning sequence so nearly came to an end, the Warwick Stakes, would from the spring of 2018 onwards be known as the Winx Stakes. With its status upgraded from Group 2, Winx also trumped the likes of Phar Lap and Tulloch, who have only second-tier races named after them. With Winx set to race on in the spring, there was a strong chance she could win her own race, as happened when Australia’s previous equine heroine won the Black Caviar Lightning Stakes at Flemington at her third-last start.
But should Winx be called the best ever? Opinions are free, but it is an extremely hard title to conclusively award. Again, as Chris Waller — and Peter Moody — have often said, racing lovers can perhaps best count their outrageous fortune to have been able to admire, enjoy and revere her, and revel in the fact there have been two such incredible champions, racing almost back-to-back, who have captivated us all and ignited our imaginations.
For Waller and Hugh Bowman; for Richard Treweeke, Debbie Kepitis, and Peter and Patty Tighe; for the mare’s creator, John Camilleri; for her Turkish strapper, Umut Odemislioglu and her other backstage crew; and for the legions of fans gripped by the story of the unstoppable mare who came from behind, it has been an amazing ride. Sometimes breathtaking. Sometimes heart-stopping. Always astounding.
Racing, as we’ve seen, is a game of ifs and buts, of people kicking themselves, and of hope springing eternally.
But who could have hoped this impossibly high?