THREE STARTS FOR THREE WINS. It’d be easy to assume Winx was on her way to glory. But from the crest of her comeback to racing, there came a crashing of the wave.
Perhaps these were the times that now endear her to fans a little more, the parts where she was mortal, fallible, unsure — like the Hollywood hero who’s convinced he can’t make it.
In contrast to Black Caviar, who began dominant and stayed dominant, winning all twenty-five of her starts, the idea of this Winx becoming a champion, or even very good, would seem laughable as her Furious Stakes triumph gave way to several dispiriting and baffling months.
Even the horse-and-rider combination was far from settled. Bowman’s association hadn’t really begun with her third start. He was off her again at her fourth. There was a reason — a careless riding suspension — but what ensued for Winx was a veritable game of musical saddles, as she became a not-much-sought-after ride indeed. From September 2014 to April 2015, four jockeys would be involved, plus another two who’d get the chance to hop on her in barrier trials.
Even Collett, who had a ‘reprieve’ to ride Winx again in her fourth start while Bowman served his ban, would soon be happy to pass her up again.
Immediately, there’d be no great shame for the daughter of Street Cry, though those who took short odds about her mightn’t have agreed. Two weeks after her Furious Stakes triumph she was sent out a strong $1.80 favourite in a seven-filly field for the 1400-metre Group 2 Tea Rose Stakes, again at set weights over 1400 metres at Randwick. She’d again tackle four of those she’d beaten last start, including Earthquake, of whom many expected better on the good 3 track.
The main opposition, however, would come from a roughie. First Seal would win more than a million dollars, but at this stage she’d won one of three starts, a low-grade midweek maiden (a race for those yet to win) on Randwick’s Kensington track. Still, there were those keen to back the John Thompson–trained filly, who firmed late from $25 to $19.
This time, Winx was tried in a more forward role, with Collett pushing her up outside the hindquarters of habitual leader Earthquake, who set a moderate tempo under McEvoy in leading the field down the High Street side. At the trots, they call Winx’s position ‘the death seat’, where you work hard facing the breeze with no cover from a horse in front. With no real pace on, however, it could have been reasonably assumed an odds-on chance would kick on from there and win as the field turned for home.
But as Collett asked Winx for her effort in the straight, the dashing acceleration of her previous start simply didn’t come. Instead, she wobbled out under pressure as Earthquake quickened. With that horse also drifting out, an inside run appeared and First Seal, beautifully positioned third on the fence by Blake Shinn, burst through. Winx still knuckled down under vigorous whip riding from Collett and, fighting as hard as she could, she claimed Earthquake near the post. But by then the pair were scrapping for the minor placings. First Seal had dashed clear, and secured a major upset victory by almost a length.
For Randwick trainer Thompson, it was an emotional win. Only that morning, he had seen dozens of horses leave his stable as his tenure as private trainer for billionaire Nathan Tinkler ended with the latter’s financial ruin.
For Waller there was disappointment. Winx had lost her ‘picket fence’ in the form guide, the sequence of three ‘1s’ beside her name now abutted by a ‘2’. Worse still, her colours had been lowered by a bolter. Yet her trainer saw no great cause for alarm. Winx would soon have a chance to atone, and in a first bid for Group 1 glory to boot. Waller reasoned that Winx, outpaced in the straight, would prefer the extra 200 metres of the Flight Stakes, again at set weights, at Randwick a fortnight later. The Winx team went home disappointed, but not dismayed.
When the return bout with First Seal came, however, it was not even close. Punters were slightly on the side of Thompson’s filly, at $2.30 to Winx’s $2.70, though both firmed slightly late on. With Bowman resuming the reins, the plan this time — in a glimpse of the future — was to ease Winx rearwards from the widest gate. After the barriers opened at Randwick’s 1600-metre start, that was what unfolded, before Bowman soon bustled his mount up along the fence to be third-last of the seven. Shinn and First Seal were a length ahead in the one-one, as long shots Echo Gal and Press Report set a muddling pace. Rounding the turn, Bowman brought Winx behind First Seal, then to her outside, as the pair set after the leaders. Waller watched on, hoping to see his filly’s best finishing burst. But while the 1600-metre journey was supposed to give Winx an edge, it was First Seal with the greater acceleration. Winx was giving her utmost, but First Seal unleashed a powerful burst to kick clear of her struggling rival at the 250. This contest had been emphatically decided. First Seal cruised home to beat Winx by three lengths.
Now the Winx camp shuffled their feet. She was supposed to have shown her real worth over the mile. The confidence from Waller and Bowman had been high. She had at least still run through the finish line in the Tea Rose Stakes, but this time had been treated to the sight of First Seal’s fast-disappearing rump. In a harrowing contrast to Furious Stakes day, this second-straight defeat brought the ignominy of indifference. A boom horse four weeks before, Winx barely rated a mention in the next day’s papers.
She was sent for another, lengthier break in the spelling paddock, her connections optimistic more development would make a more formidable filly the next autumn. Yet her fortunes would only decline further as the stable’s bewilderment grew.
***
As 2015 dawned, Winx returned to Waller’s stable amid hope she was ready to shake her new ‘unknown quantity’ tag and realise her full potential. Waller had two Group 1s in sight, chiefly that most prized of fillies’ classics, the Australian Oaks.
A first 900-metre Rosehill barrier trial under Glyn Schofield went to type — a quiet run for fourth. A second was less flattering — a four-length last of seven, though her rider, Blake Shinn, kept a tight hold of the reins, not asking for maximum effort.
Winx would resume in mid-February at Group 2 level in the Light Fingers Stakes, over the same Randwick 1200 metres of her Furious Stakes showstopper. But any anticipation around her was now decidedly restrained. She was barely mentioned in media previews, the focus firmly on the also-resuming First Seal. Even Bowman was looking elsewhere, to Waller-trained stablemate Amicus, a filly also part-owned by Debbie Kepitis. Bought at the same sale as Winx, Amicus had in fact provided Kepitis her first Group 1 win in the previous spring’s 1000 Guineas at Caulfield. She was ridden by Bowman that day, and he wanted to stick with her. In fact, he wouldn’t ride Winx that autumn at all.
Still, as Collett donned the blue and white again for the Light Fingers, punters were adamant there was something about Winx. She drifted from $6 to $8, but then a flood of support forced her in to $4.80. She started at $5, behind Golden Slipper winner Mossfun at $3.60 and First Seal at $3.70.
The money for Winx, however, would stay in the bookies’ bags. For not the last time in her career, she missed the start badly from gate three, settling last of the eleven. Mossfun was positioned prominently in second place, with First Seal racing midfield, as outsider Press Report set a solid pace. As the field fanned out around the home turn, Winx was still at the rear, but at least had galloping room. Collett angled for an inside run and Winx began to make ground, giving hope to her backers. But that hope would last only fleetingly. Again, Winx was outsprinted by her rivals in the home straight. Though still running on, she came only a three-length seventh as Gai Waterhouse’s Adrift — substantially backed from $100, but still the race outsider at $41 — kicked on from fourth on the turn to upset First Seal by a length. Mossfun managed only sixth, with Bowman’s Amicus a fading ninth.
Winx backers looked for excuses. Most agreed the better going that day was far wider than the inside of the track. And was Winx being trained for longer distances, hence the lack of her usual zip in the straight? A preparation towards staying races, such as the Oaks, will usually lead trainers to pour longer efforts of trackwork into their horses, engendering more stamina than speed. Collett gave this some credence in saying, ‘I loved the way she finished it off.’1
Nevertheless, when largely the same group of twelve fillies stepped up to the 1400 metres of the Group 2 Surround Stakes two weeks later at Warwick Farm, punters were wary. Winx eased from $7.50 to a $9 third-favourite.
First Seal was rated a certainty, backed in to $1.50, and lived up to the billing. Kept wide by Blake Shinn on the best part of a soft track, the Fastnet Rock–sired filly dashed clear in the straight and won by almost three lengths. Winx, having settled at the tail of the field under Collett, hooked wide on the home turn and, at the scene of her debut victory, appeared poised for a swooping finish. Instead, she couldn’t muster any dramatic late charge at all in the straight and came only fifth, 4.8 lengths off First Seal, and half a length behind Bowman’s fourth-placed Amicus.
A few months earlier, the Winx team had felt they had a potential star, but there was little doubt now who was the headliner of Australia’s three-year-old fillies. Caller Mark Shean underlined it as he boomed, ‘She’s something special, First Seal.’
But while it seems an aberration today, Winx’s run wasn’t awful. She’d sat last after another moderate start, sticking, like First Seal, to the wider going. The closing flourish seen in earlier races wasn’t there, but Winx, who was last of the twelve at the 200, was still finishing on at the end.
Yet racing fans didn’t quite know what to make of her. Was she stealthily building to the longer features of the autumn? Or, since she’d proven adept at shorter distances earlier on, was she losing her fight? Was she becoming the dreaded type who finishes well to keep you interested next time: one who flatters to deceive?
Collett would later reflect that at that point even the Waller stable ‘didn’t have that big an opinion of her’.
‘That’s probably why I was able to get back on her,’ he said. ‘She just hadn’t put it all together a bit. She was slow out of the barriers; the penny hadn’t completely dropped yet.’2
As Waller went back to work with his now enigmatic filly, an upturn in fortunes was around the corner. But would it be a false dawn?
***
Waller sat down, vexed, at his drawing board to plan his next step. He had one of those testing choices to make; a rein to pull. Accepted wisdom said the best fillies in the land should next go into one of the best female races in the land: the Group 1 Coolmore Classic over 1500 metres at Rosehill in March. It was where First Seal was headed; Amicus and Adrift too.
In the end, Winx would contest a 1500-metre race at Rosehill that day, but the one after the Coolmore. For the first time since her second start, she’d take on colts and geldings, in the Phar Lap Stakes. It was a Group 2, with prizemoney of $175,000 — $425,000 less than the Coolmore — and no filly had won it for ten years. Yet Waller’s was an inspired choice.
Horses not only know when they’ve won a race; they also generally love it. The attendant adoration, affection and fuss puts a spring in their step and boosts their confidence that they can do it again. They know they can get past other rivals to fulfil the instinct of leading the pack. By contrast, losing can become a habit, as a horse sees that it in fact can take the soft option and run with the pack, instead of pushing itself to the pain barrier to win. The sun will still rise and the feed bin will be filled.
Waller knew First Seal was in shining form. Apart from that, the Coolmore was open to older, more seasoned, battle-hardened mares, with a large field assured.
By contrast, the Phar Lap, for three-year-olds, would likely draw far fewer entrants — only eight started on the day — and of only moderate quality. The best-rated males were Testashadow, a last-start sixth at Group 3 level at Flemington, Godolphin’s Hauraki, who’d run last in the same race, and Diamond Valores, tenth of thirteen in a Rosehill Group 2 at his previous outing. Winx would also carry 2 kilograms less than the males under the set-weights conditions, with 54.5 kilograms. In fact, her likely toughest foe was another filly, Supara, who’d been second in the Surround Stakes.
Thus punters were prepared to forgive Winx her recent stumbles. Jason Collett wasn’t as fortunate, with connections seeking a replacement after Winx’s two failed runs of the campaign. With Hugh Bowman taking a Group 1 offer in Hong Kong that weekend, the Winx mount went to another leading Sydney rider in Tommy Berry.
A strong and compact jockey, Berry began his career in 2006, was Sydney’s leading apprentice in 2010, and rose through the ranks to finish fourth in the premiership in 2012–13. That season brought his first Group 1 winner, when the Godolphin-owned Epaulette won the Golden Rose at Rosehill in the spring, before Berry followed up by taking the Golden Slipper in the autumn on Overreach. Coming off a third-place in the 2013–14 standings, he was a fairly straightforward selection as Winx’s new rider.
Waller’s choice of race for the filly also gained strong support in the betting. Winx was backed from $2.90 favouritism to $2.45, ahead of Supara, a drifter from $3 to $4.60. One race after First Seal had been narrowly upset by relative long shot Plucky Belle in the day’s feature, punters hoped their forgiveness would be rewarded, and the real Winx would stand up.
As the gates opened, Berry, confidence high after two earlier winners, allowed his mount to ease to seventh from gate six. She was seven lengths off the pace by the 800, and at the back of the herd on the turn, but clicked up by Berry, then given two reminders with the whip inside the 300, the filly began to show the acceleration and the fight her backers felt was inside her. She finished powerfully down the outside, collaring Diamond Valores and Supara at the 150 before bursting clear to win by a length and three-quarters, with Hauraki grabbing second.
Berry praised Winx and Waller — who was in Melbourne to see his colt Brazen Beau win the Newmarket Handicap — saying the trainer ‘knows how to set them for races’.
‘He took the touch easier option and skipped the Coolmore for this race and the win would have given the filly a lot of confidence,’ Berry said. ‘I was a bit further back than I wanted to be. I just didn’t panic. I knew I was on the best horse in the race and rode her accordingly.’
Winx had put her ownership trio well in front, lifting her earnings to $435,000. It was now on to a second shot at a Group 1 in the Vinery Stud Stakes, back against three-year-old fillies, at Rosehill a fortnight hence. Formerly the Storm Queen Stakes, the race was a worthy target itself, but also a 2000-metre stepping stone for fillies aimed at the more glittering prize of the 2400-metre Australian Oaks.
Winx and her connections had felt a huge boost to their confidence too. But it was about to take another battering. So soon after her career seemed to have been carefully put back on track by Waller, the darkest hours lay ahead.