Owners Debbie Kepitis, Richard Treweeke, Peter and Patty Tighe and trainer Chris Waller didn’t end 2015 Oaks Day breathless, but with the air taken out of them by Gust Of Wind.

There were no excuses.

Winx was comfortably beaten in the Australian Oaks by a horse with a 68 benchmark rating — the figure assessors use to decide a horse’s level of ability — compared to Winx’s 95; by a horse who, compared with Winx’s $443,000 in earnings, had won $31,150.

Was this promising filly merely good?

Worse still, did she warrant an even lower descriptor?

Was she only handy?

Next morning, back at the Rosehill stables, Liam Prior and a few other staff members ran their eyes and hands over the humbled Oaks aspirant.

Left again without excuses or reasons, such as a minor injury, Waller uttered a much-remembered quote.

“Boys,” he said, ‘”he looks no good.”

Waller scratched his chin and considered the possibilities. She’d had five runs that campaign, possibly enough. Was it time for the spelling paddock, and a little more growing? Should they wait and see what kind of four-year-old mare came back for the spring?

With Winx’s career having gone south, Waller looked north, for the Group 1 Queensland Oaks seven weeks ahead in late May.

But first would come a lead-up race over 1600 metres — a worrying 600 metres shorter than the Queensland Oaks — in the Sunshine Coast Guineas.

It’s a Group 3 event, which, with respect, had never been high on anyone’s radar.

It is now famous.

SUNSHINE COAST GUINEAS

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.

Waller booked yet another jockey for his underachieving filly, her fifth in just 11 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 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 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 57.5kg, 3.5kg 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 14 in the large 18-horse field and meeting colts and geldings again (though with 2kg 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 had 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 1000km 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 2.42pm, 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].”

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.”

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 18 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 31 years earlier — belted out with great alarm another cry for the ages: “Winx is last! She’ll have to come past the 17 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 11 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. 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.

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 11 other Group 1s. And Cassidy had no fleeting impression of her, riding her 11 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 50m out, she was 1.8 lengths clear of him on the line.

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.

THE BEST HORSE I HAVE EVER RIDDEN

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.

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. “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.”

* This is an edited extract from Winx: Biography of a Champion by Trevor Marshallsea (ABC Books), in stores tomorrow.