History making Winx’s Queensland connections
WHO’D have thought the sport of kings could produce a rival to Black Caviar so soon. Winx has smashed the legendary mare’s winning streak, and she has several significant links to Queensland.
CM Insight
Don't miss out on the headlines from CM Insight. Followed categories will be added to My News.
W HEN Black Caviar retired with 25 consecutive wins to her name in the autumn of 2013, it was thought to be a record that would stand the test of time.
After all, no horse in the history of Australian racing had recorded that sequence of wins competing at the highest level.
Yet at Sydney’s Royal Randwick racecourse at 3pm today, that record went by the wayside as Winx recorded her 26th straight victory. It’s a sequence that had its origins at Caloundra’s Corbould Park racecourse in May 2015, when Winx came from last to win the Sunshine Coast Guineas.
Jockey Larry Cassidy fortuitously predicted that day she was the best horse he had ridden (a suggestion scoffed at by many at the time, given his association with the Kiwi wonder mare Sunline), and so it has proven.
Winx has long since bettered Makybe Diva’s Australian prizemoney record, with just a tick under $19 million now banked.
Not a bad return on the $230,000 she cost as a yearling on the Gold Coast in 2014.
If her winning streak continues this spring, those earnings will reach near enough to $25 million and she will become the first horse ever to win Australia’s greatest weight-for-age race, the W.S. Cox Plate, four times.
Revered judges like Bruce McAvaney have even dared compare her feats with the legendary Phar Lap.
In an era where racing doesn’t hold the same relevance as it once did, Winx’s racetrack deeds have managed to transcend racing, capturing the imagination of a broader audience and earning herself many thousands of fans.
Those closest to her, like trainer Chris Waller and Queensland based part-owner Peter Tighe, acknowledge they are living the stuff of dreams being associated with a horse like Winx.
W aller is a recent inductee to the Australian Racing Hall of Fame, being the leading trainer of big race winners in this part of the world for six years running.
But unlike the Bart Cummingses or Tommy Smiths of last century, Australia’s leading trainers aren’t readily recognised outside the horse racing bubble these days.
“From a profile perspective, she’s certainly changed my profile,” Waller says.
“I will often get, ‘you’re the person who trains Winx. What’s your name again?’ Which I think is fantastic.
“That happens quite a bit, so they know me for training Winx but they are not that familiar with me and that’s how it should be with a horse like her.
“She’s added more pressure to my life, but it’s certainly a privilege to be experiencing that pressure, to the extent where you are very careful about the timing of when you might take a break. You have to think about Winx with your plans.”
Waller says training a freakish talent like Winx goes beyond any realistic ambitions he may have had when entering the training game.
“A horse like Winx is a dream for most people. These horses come around rarely. It’s like winning the Lotto, you know that it does happen, but you don’t really expect it to happen to yourself,” he says.
“She’s made us all proud for being part of her life.
“People have jumped on the Winx train, firstly by a racing audience, secondly via a sporting audience and now by the general public.
“Australia is very proud of their sport and their icons and she’s become one of them.
“We’ve had to understand this and make her available in media conferences. She’s a household name and people are genuinely interested in whether Winx is still winning, who she is beating and how did she do it.
“And most of the time she’s coming from well back in the field, she has that Phar Lap- style of racing of an Aussie battler capturing the imagination. She’s on the back of Black Caviar, who was unbeaten and you don’t expect to see these horses come along that often.”
Intriguingly, Winx took some time to assume her aura of invincibility. Unlike Black Caviar, who was undefeated through her entire career, Winx was vulnerable early on.
She won her first two starts in minor races as a two-year-old, ridden in both wins by Jason Collett, who felt the daughter of Street Cry was a talent but not the gem she turned out to be.
“If you were to say to me that she would go on to win the Cox Plate three times straight I would not have believed you,” Collett says of those two wins.
Winx won her first Group race, the Furious Stakes, when returning as a three-year-old, but was then beaten twice by First Seal, who was regarded as clearly the superior horse during that 2014 spring campaign.
The following autumn, Winx missed the place in three of her first four starts. First Seal beat her home another three times.
Then she was beaten in the AJC Oaks, somewhat controversially, when ridden by Hong Kong-based “Magic Man” Joao Moreira.
Gust Of Wind was her conqueror that day – a horse who has failed to win a race after that. Winx has won 25 since.
The streak began at the Sunshine Coast, when Larry Cassidy brought her from last on the turn to win running away. Cassidy knew the ride was a one-off and he told Winx’s regular jockey Hugh Bowman she was truly something special.
Cassidy had ridden Sunline, who was the first southern hemisphere horse to earn $10 million, but felt Winx was better.
“I have never ridden a horse with acceleration like that. They just don’t do it,” Cassidy says.
“I told Hugh Bowman the same thing before the Queensland Oaks and she’s lived up to it every time since.”
Bowman has been aboard Winx in 23 of her 24 wins since the Sunshine Coast, including every one of her 18 Group 1 successes.
After winning her second Queen Elizabeth Stakes in April, Bowman said Winx has “10-12 lengths on her rivals” which makes his task an easier one.
“I know I’ve got the engine to round them up. She’s just an exceptional athlete,” he said.
“God forbid if something went wrong, it wouldn’t be a good place to be, but she’s so exceptional she is able to overcome everything and what a pleasure she is for sport.
“She creates so much attention, I’m just so elated, I’m so proud of her and I’m just so proud to be a part of it.”
Queensland racing hasn’t had a lot to crow about over the past few years, but it can lay claim to a few layers of the Winx story.
She was sold here on the Gold Coast for $230,000 at the Magic Millions sales, the first win in her current streak of 25 was achieved on the Sunshine Coast and the first of her 18 Group 1 wins was at Brisbane’s Doomben racecourse in the 2015 Queensland Oaks.
She is also part-owned by a Queenslander. She races in the colours of Peter Tighe, whose family has been synonymous with the Rocklea markets.
He and wife Patty have been there every step of the way in the Winx journey, with their children Nicole, Andrew and James happily enjoying the ride.
Despite Tighe’s race colours, the ones adorned by Winx, being blue, he is very much a proud Queenslander and has been very obliging in making Queenslanders feel like they own a little piece of the Winx story.
“It’s something pretty special. How could you put into words what she means to us?” Tighe says.
“It’s something that brings the family together.
“It’s an enjoyable thing where the whole family is part of it.
“From day one she made us happy horse owners, then she went to the next level, the next level and then the next level.
“It’s been an honour to be involved with such a prestigious animal.”
Peter and Patty were the only owners present the day she won at the Sunshine Coast and he says “not in a million years” could he or his fellow owners envisage what has unfolded since that day.
“No one can dream that big. That’s a dream you just don’t have. We all dream, but you never dream as big as that,” he said.
“This is something that is just beyond belief. Part of the business is just trying to get a good horse.
“Watching the Sunlines and Makybe Divas, I was there for their wins and happy to witness it.
“Then of course you dreamt what it would be like to be a Tony Santic (Makybe Diva’s owner). Not in an envious way, but just wondering whether that could ever happen.
“It still seems surreal that what’s happened has happened to us.”
Tighe had raced horses for a long time, two decades in fact, and had never had one that could be described as truly elite.
When he went to the Magic Millions yearling sale on the Gold Coast in January 2014, he had never had a Group 1 winner.
And as is so often the case in racing, luck played a part in Winx landing on his books.
Bloodstock agent Guy Mulcaster, who has been buying horses for Waller and his clients for years, is not one to sugar-coat his success.
He recalls having an order to buy a horse for Tighe and his group at that sale and they had missed out on a number of other candidates before Winx walked into the ring.
Had Mulcaster been successful in buying an earlier lot, Winx would have raced for someone entirely different.
“That specific group, which Peter Tighe put together, had a budget of around $200,000. We had tried some other horses during the sale and the 200 wasn’t quite enough.
“So they decided to stretch the budget a little bit.
“I don’t know how many they had on their list, but it would have been more than three or four.
“It has worked out well for us, no doubt about that, but things all have to fall into line.
“It is very easy afterwards, when they turn out good.
“It’s like when you get so many people who say they were underbidders on good horses.”
Mulcaster says he looked at Winx “probably five times” before he bought her, but that’s no different to any other horse he buys.
“I see them all on the farm, when we get there to the sale, then again when they make our list and then again when we take Chris around to look at them and maybe again if we have clients that are interested,” he says.
Perhaps not surprisingly with Winx as the flag-bearer, Mulcaster is an unabashed fan of the Magic Millions sale.
“It’s the first sale of the year. All the owners are in buying mode, we buy more horses on the Gold Coast than we do at any other sale and we probably have more luck at the Gold Coast than we do at any other sale,” he says.
“People are there, on holiday and they want to buy horses.”
Magic Millions owner Gerry Harvey describes Winx as a “phenomenon” and a horse that has taken the sales company’s brand to the world.
“The fact she is linked with Magic Millions forever is great for our company and helps marketing the brand to the world. There’s no bigger name in world racing right now than Winx,” Harvey says.
“The flow on from Winx for breeders and vendors who offer their stock at Magic Millions auctions is immense as our buyers know we regularly sell champions – life changing horses like Winx.”
Today at Randwick, Magic Millions will present $10,000 cheques to both the National Jockeys Trust and NSW Thoroughbred Rehabilitation Trust after raising money through the sale of 2000 Winx caps.
“The caps went to countries all over the world. You wouldn’t believe the interest and people are still wanting them. They sold like hot cakes,” Harvey says.
With 26 consecutive wins and most of them achieved in a breeze, the assumption is that Winx just has to turn up to win, but those closest to her know it’s not as simple as that.
“You continue to prepare yourself for the day she doesn’t win as well. We think about that just as much as we think about winning,” Waller says. “We see the sense of responsibility to be mature when she gets beaten, cope with it and deal with it.”
As a seven-year-old, Winx’s career curtain call can’t be too far away. Very few mares – particularly of Winx’s value – race on into their seventh year.
Waller concedes it will be sad when Winx finally does leave the stable for the last time, but it then “opens up another chapter”.
“She’s going to be a mum and that foal, to me, will be like a grandkid really. It will be pretty special. I hope I get to coach it one day,” he says.
“I don’t think I will ever have the expectations for it to be as good as mum, but it will be a lot of fun and it will certainly be a golden child!
“We will get used to life after Winx. It will be like a lot of sporting people. All of a sudden you will be replaced.
“But she’s part of racing history now and that will never change.”
RBA rate cut is ‘same old economic circle jerk’
While many were quick to welcome last week’s rate cut, some say it’s a “bad joke” that’s unlikely to mean much for households because of one thing. HAVE YOUR SAY
‘Spiritual duty’: Minister silent on heavenly housing solution
A priest whose flock sold its church to the government has backed a planned housing solution, but there’s no response from church or state.