IN 2015, THE SUNSHINE Coast Guineas couldn’t lay claim to lashings of prestige, or call itself ‘time-honoured’. It was first run in 2000. The Caloundra racecourse itself, built on an old swamp, didn’t even exist until 1985. With a roll call of winners laced with none of the all-time greats, the race couldn’t even be given any distinctive title, like ‘nursery of champions’ or some such. Not at that stage anyway.
Waller rolled the dice again and sent Winx to Queensland, booking yet another jockey for his underachieving filly, her fifth in just eleven career starts. While Jim Cassidy had missed riding her — though by then it probably ate away at him very little — his younger brother Larry, a premiership winner in Sydney and his subsequent base of Brisbane, would take the mount.
The $125,000 Guineas, Winx’s 1600-metre lead-up to the 2200-metre Queensland Oaks, had support billing as the race before the Sunshine Coast’s annual highlight, the Caloundra Cup. It wasn’t even that high on Waller’s radar — he stayed in Sydney and didn’t even go to the race there on that Saturday, 16 May 2015.
Around lunchtime, Winx, this rangy Sydney filly the locals had seen on TV, arrived at the course — the same venue where her mother had won the last race at the corresponding Cup meeting eight years earlier. Vegas Showgirl had carried topweight of 57.5 kilograms, 3.5 kilograms more than anyone else, to win by a length and a half as a $4.80 second-favourite. It’s doubtful many Winx backers spotted the family omen, but, despite drawing barrier fourteen in the large eighteen-horse field and meeting colts and geldings again (though with 2 kilograms less), she was a warm $2.60 favourite, in from $2.80.
Most support, however, went to Melbourne gelding Merion, a two-time Flemington black-type winner who’d been sixth in the Caulfield and Australian guineas. After two Group-level placings in the Sydney autumn, Merion firmed from $5.50 to $4.40, with local Worthy Cause at $5.50.
As Cassidy slipped on Winx’s colours, back home in Sydney Waller was heading out for an appointment. His mind was anywhere but 1000 kilometres away in Caloundra, a likely result of learning to temper his expectations of Winx. At the last second, he remembered she was running that day, at 2.42 pm, so he told his wife, Stephanie, he’d stop to watch the race on his way to his car.
As for the owners, Kepitis was on course, but was also nowhere near Queensland.
‘I couldn’t be at the Sunshine Coast that day,’ she later said. ‘I was at Scone [races].’1
With the well-seasoned Treweeke’s racecourse appearances limited, only Peter and Patty Tighe made it to the track, with only a short drive to make up the coast from their home in Brisbane. By now, their anticipation was measured.
‘Chris said if we could run a good fourth or fifth at Caloundra we’d be happy,’ Peter said. ‘Patty and I were the only ones from the camp there. We went there with no expectations.’2
Still, there were thousands of Winx backers who thought she owed them money, and who piled on again at the ‘shorts’ to chase what they’d lost in the Oaks. Before long, as the large field thundered towards the home turn, they’d be cursing this bloody Winx again.
The eighteen hopefuls sprang out onto the good 3 track and, unsurprisingly from her wide gate, Winx and Cassidy drifted towards the tail as the field strung out along the back straight. With $11-chance Sky Limit playing a familiar role for Gai Waterhouse in front, and Merion and Worthy Cause in the first half-dozen, the size of Winx’s task only grew larger past the 800-metre mark. By the home turn, 450 metres out, it was enormous. Her backers were ready to give up as broadcaster Alan Thomas — previously most famous for his call of the infamous Fine Cotton race thirty-one years earlier — belted out with great alarm another cry for the ages: ‘Winx is last! She’ll have to come past the seventeen of them!’
Cassidy was patient, easing out to be the widest runner before letting Winx have her head. At the 300, though, she was still last, no less than eleven lengths off Sky Limit, who was besieged by Worthy Cause. Hard-bitten punters had seen enough. Winx had no hope from there.
But steadily, incredulously, eyes began to widen. Urged with two tiny flicks of Cassidy’s whip, Winx started to roar into top gear. An outrageous bid for victory had begun.
In a mere second, it looked clear: she was at her very best this day. She was smooth, rolling, seemingly floating over the turf. In a couple of ever-quickening bounds, she passed six tiring rivals. Then another three. And another two, one of them the exhausted Merion. Yet at the 150, she was still a gaping four lengths behind, as Melbourne long shot Ulmann pushed up on the fence to challenge the leading Worthy Cause.
By this late stage, the last few seconds of the race, Thomas hadn’t mentioned Winx since that home-turn cry, so thoroughly was she out of the reckoning. But as she burst into his view, with breathtaking speed, inside the 100, the caller hit a new octave.
‘It’s Ulmann and Worthy Cause, they’re together with a hundred to go — LOOK AT WINX! LOOK AT WINX, SHE’S COME FROM LAST! SHE’S STORMED DOWN THE OUTSIDE, OH WHAT A WIN!’
It was all he could say. She’d left no time for anything else. In a few strides, she’d claimed Worthy Cause and then Ulmann. They were both at top speed, but suddenly looked like they were cantering. So far back with so little time, Winx had produced one of the most explosive finishing bursts seen for many seasons, to triumph by a clear margin.
In Sydney, alongside astonishment, Waller felt a surge of reassurance. Vindication. He hadn’t been wrong. An incredulous Peter Tighe would later reflect ‘there was a wow factor that day’.3
This wasn’t a top-class field, in a top-class race, but the feat was extraordinary. That was underscored by the positively buzzing Cassidy, a man who’d felt top class under him many times before, who dismounted to be greeted with a wild bear hug from Tighe.
‘This is the best horse I’ve been on since Sunline,’ the jockey said.
Sunline?
Did he mean that?
The Kiwi mare had earned an Australasian stakes record of $11 million — the most by any mare in the world. She won two Cox Plates, the second, in 2000, by seven lengths. She won eleven other Group 1s. And Cassidy had no fleeting impression of her, riding her eleven times for six wins. And now he was mentioning three-year-old Winx in the same breath.
Yet his words were considered. What he’d just felt was something even the best jockeys might experience once or twice in their life if they’re lucky.
Such was Winx’s finish that, after being level with Ulmann fifty metres out, she was 1.8 lengths clear of him on the line. Was there at least a little poetry in the fact Ulmann was racing for Peter Moody and Luke Nolen?
Two years and one month after that pair’s champion Black Caviar had retired, as Waller drove to his appointment digesting what he’d just seen, and as Cassidy just kept shaking his head in disbelief, a new and incredible chapter in Australian racing history had begun.
***
Chris Waller also claimed the Caloundra Cup with another favourite, Index Linked, that day. In Adelaide, the city’s biggest race, the Goodwood, also took place, won by Moody’s sprinter Flamberge. But it was the performance of Winx that was the talk of Australian racing that day.
While the opposition were moderate and her overall time — 1:36.19 minutes — was almost one and a half seconds outside the track record, Winx set fans of sectional times abuzz, cracking 34 seconds for her last 600 metres with an estimated 33.93. It stood to reason. A horse has to be setting those sorts of times to finish how she did.
Time would also show Larry Cassidy was not deluded that day. Nor was the 44-year-old prone to exaggeration. In fact, long after the post-race frenzy, he went a step further.
‘I rang my wife and said, “She could be the best horse I have ever ridden,”’ he’d recall two years later. ‘She said, “Really?”, and we started rattling off horses like Sunline, Golden Sword, Secret Savings and Not A Single Doubt, which went through my mind. But I said I had never had a horse accelerate like that. Ever.’
Sadly for him, as he was based in Brisbane and Winx would race mostly in the southern states, Cassidy knew his ride would be a one-off. At least he knew, as Leonard Cohen once wrote about another fleeting encounter, that he had not been denied the full measure of beauty.
‘It is an incredible feeling, one every jockey craves. To put it into perspective, I was probably fifteen lengths off them when I came to the outside,’ said Cassidy, who, if he was to be beaten, ‘didn’t want it to be because I was on the inside behind horses’.
‘I thought, “I’m in trouble here. I probably can’t win but I won’t panic.” Yet when I pushed the button, still ten to twelve lengths off them, I knew I was going to win.’
Cassidy would later do something he’d done just once before. He took his saddle from the Guineas, had it framed with a photo of the win, and mounted it on the wall of his home, where it remains today. The other time? Sunline’s 1999 Doncaster triumph.
That mare’s name came up again when Cassidy spoke with the jockey who’d take over for Winx’s next start in the Queensland Oaks.
‘She could be the best horse I have ridden,’ Cassidy said yet again.
‘What about Sunline?’ asked the jockey.
‘I know — but horses just can’t win like that.’
The jockey was Hugh Bowman. At the start of the filly’s real journey, the Winx picture was finally complete.4
***
By late May 2015, Bowman was closing in on his third Sydney premiership. Understandably, given the events on the Sunshine Coast, he was just as excited about reuniting with Winx. It wouldn’t merely be his third ride on the filly as she chased that elusive Group 1; it would be the start of a famous union that, apart from one early suspension-enforced absence, would be as unbreakable as it was formidable.
Down through the racing ages, there have been a handful of special partnerships between horse and jockey that have helped define them both.
Phar Lap and Pike. Kingston Town and Johnston. Black Caviar and Nolen.
Winx and Bowman.
It had a nice ring.
***
Though Winx was nearing the end of a long and taxing preparation for a developing three-year-old filly, there were factors — apart from the stunning win at Caloundra — counting in her favour in her next attempt at a Group 1 two weeks later.
While she had not finished the 2400 metres of the Australian Oaks strongly, the Queensland Oaks would be 200 metres shorter than the normal classics distance. With the race’s usual home, Eagle Farm, closed for renovation, the winter carnival highlights would be at Doomben, which can’t accommodate a 2400-metre start (its circumference and shape meaning the starting gates would have to be positioned unsafely soon before a bend). In fact, by either coincidence or design, history would show Winx had already had her one and only start at 2400 metres. And this would be her only run beyond 2040 metres.
On top of the favourable distance, word from the stable was that she had progressed well after her Sunshine Coast dazzler, testament again to Waller’s handling skills.
Winx was firmly ensconced at the head of the market for the $500,000 Oaks, as she set out, once again, to join an illustrious honour roll. While only added to the calendar in 1951, the race had produced many worthy winners, such as the champion Surround and Doncaster-winner Analie in the 1970s, triple Oaks-winner November Rain in 1981, five-time Group 1–winner Triscay ten years later, and 2001 winner Ethereal, who claimed the Caulfield–Melbourne Cup double a few months afterwards.
But while she was a warm favourite, there were plenty of keen judges predicting Winx would be beaten.
Again, she’d face sparring partner and stablemate Ballet Suite, to be ridden by gifted jockey Kerrin McEvoy. He’d been aboard when the filly partly fulfilled her potential by winning the Listed Princess Stakes over 2000 metres at Doomben as she, like Winx, completed just one lead-up race. That was a week earlier than Winx’s Sunshine Coast Guineas, but Waller had kept Ballet Suite in trim with a searching Gold Coast track gallop a week before the Oaks.
Gai Waterhouse’s Bohemian Lily also attracted backing in the days before the event. She’d easily won Doomben’s Group 2 lead-up, The Roses, over 2020 metres on the previous Saturday, after a second to Ballet Suite two weeks earlier, and a Listed Gold Coast win the start before that.
Bookmakers reported that while Winx accounted for almost half the money wagered, most bets had been taken on Sydney filly Sebrina. Despite coming off a fourth in a lowly restricted-class, benchmark-73 race at Randwick, she’d been held up in traffic before finishing the 2000 metres strongly. Big money rider Glen Boss was booked for the Oaks.
Six days before the race, Winx was installed at $2.50, with Bohemian Lily at $6, Sebrina $7 and Ballet Suite $8. The day before the event, Winx’s task appeared to become markedly easier when Bohemian Lily was scratched (both literally and figuratively). But well-known Melbourne analyst Vince Accardi came out in a newspaper report saying Ballet Suite deserved equal-favouritism, saying she was ‘right up to Winx in terms of ability’, and tipping Waller’s second-stringer to win.5
Waller had performed a balancing act to keep both fillies in shape, and in a race-eve interview said merely that Winx and Ballet Suite had had ‘a great grounding for the Oaks’. On raceday, he said he couldn’t split the two in the yard.6 Was he playing his cards close to his chest? Being diplomatic, in respect to Ballet Suite’s owners? Most punters thought so. As race time approached, Winx was strongly backed from $2.10 to $1.95. Sebrina drifted from $7 to $8.50, while there was a flicker of money for Ballet Suite, at $9.50 in from $10.
Bowman was legged aboard Winx for the first time since their second in the Flight Stakes eight months earlier. He trotted her to the starting gates at the top of the Doomben home straight, hoping, as her Sunshine Coast run had suggested, he was on a vastly different horse this time.
From barrier ten of sixteen on the good 3 track, Bowman eased the raging favourite towards the rear into a sweet position third-last, one off the fence with cover, where she still sat at the 900-metre mark. Giving a lesson in riding short-priced favourites, Bowman soon took luck out of the equation, starting his run at the 700 and easing Winx wide. Soon she showed a prime example of what became her trademark — that remarkable change of pace. With sublime ease she was able to spear across on a diagonal run through the back of the field approaching the turn, by which time she’d moved into clear running. She entered the 320-metre home straight the widest runner, some eight horses off the fence. She was still eight lengths off the lead, held again by a Peter Moody hopeful in long shot Imperial Lass. But on this day there was zero doubt Winx would get there in time.
‘Here’s Winx,’ cried Alan Thomas. ‘She’s winding up and ’ave a look at ’er go!’
She was indeed a sight to behold, her withering finish taking her to the front as soon as the 200-metre mark. Charging down the centre of the track, all alone under Bowman’s hands-and-heels persuasion, it was apt that she was a distance away from any rivals. She was in a different league. She fairly scorched home to win by three and a half lengths, with Imperial Lass pipped for second by another Melbourne filly, Ungrateful Ellen.
Neither of those two, nor seventh-placed Ballet Suite, nor ninth-placed Sebrina, would amount to very much. And Winx’s time was almost three seconds outside the track record, set in Bowman’s first Group 1 success in Defier’s Doomben Cup eleven years earlier. But having beaten what was put in front of her with such destructive force, the murmurs across the country about Winx were growing louder.
Waller was one of the most impressed. In post-race interviews, he revealed a little more about his expectations for the filly.
After Peter Tighe had praised his training ‘genius’ for his ability to keep Winx fit after the Australian Oaks, Waller countered, ‘I don’t look at it that way with good horses. After she ran second in the Australian Oaks, I sat down with my staff and said it was going to be hard to make Brisbane. But we did it and a quality filly like her just needs to be kept fit without being flattened.
‘The pressure is on when you’ve got a favourite in a big race. She’s got class and a turn of foot. To have that extra gear or two makes a big difference.
‘Good horses make things look easy. She was dominant.’
Looking back on that fateful Queensland raid, Waller would later recall, ‘All my team agreed her best opportunity, and perhaps her last, to win a Group 1 race was the Queensland Oaks. We got the first part right — but we got the second part wrong!’7
As for Bowman’s reunification with the filly, suffice to say he was considerably more impressed, surprised even, with the ride Winx had provided him compared to the last time, when beaten three lengths into second by First Seal in the Flight Stakes.
‘She didn’t feel like she was going to let down like that,’ he said of her home straight romp. ‘She’s done it with authority.’
In winning back-to-back for the first time since her initial three starts, Winx had eclipsed several milestones. She had provided Waller with a modern-era Australian record of thirteen Group 1s for the season, beating the twelve set by two training behemoths he greatly respected, Lee Freedman and John Hawkes. The $327,000 first prize pushed her earnings past the million-dollar mark. And the victory also gave Peter and Patty Tighe a first top-level win under the Magic Bloodstock colours. (The Tighes and Debbie Kepitis had already celebrated Group 1 success with a horse they bought into soon after purchasing Winx in their bout of spectacular speculation early in 2013. Preferment, raced by twelve part-owners, had won the Victoria Derby seven months earlier, but the Waller-trained colt raced in another owner’s colours. He’d win three more Group 1s and $3.4 million before being retired to stud — normally enough to earn a ‘stable-star’ ranking . . . had he not been outshone by a supernova a few stalls away.)
Winx had taken a major step up from being merely ‘promising’ — and at times an unfulfilled promise at that. She’d become one of the most exciting horses in the country.
Noting she’d been in work for a long time, Waller identified the Myer Classic, at Flemington on Victoria Derby day as her next main target. He reasoned that the fact it was held late in the spring would allow Winx a lengthy rest.
But those plans would change, and change gloriously.