Paul Kent: Winx a traditional hero for a new generation
As Winx prepares for her final race, the country is in a small rapture the way Phar Lap lifted a nation’s spirits, writes PAUL KENT.
The heart is not a logical place.
It is quick to anoint heroes and, once convinced, not easily discouraged. This, many will say, is the way it should be.
Thursday morning Winx finished her final trackwork gallop and was being led through the mounting yard at Rosehill.
It is worth remembering that nothing about Winx is normal anymore.
Instead of a quiet dawn she was met with a solid media contingent, automatic cameras, too many people. Cameras clicked and trainer Chris Waller slipped off her ear muffs, the sudden clatter agitating the horse. She lashed out and kicked a signage board.
“This,” said the always positive Waller, “tells me she is ready to race on Saturday.”
She was fresh and brim full with energy. Good sign from a seven-year-old.
So it was not all concerning looks and furrowed brows. For one, the sponsor sign immediately became a piece of genuine Winx memorabilia, personally autographed.
Begin the bidding war.
AUSSIE IMMORTALS: WINX BETTER THAN BRADMAN
As Winx prepares for her final race on Saturday the country is in a small rapture. Bookmakers will hold upwards of $50 million on her alone for her final race, many of them small bets that won’t return enough to afford a scratch ticket.
Logic left the narrative long ago, which is a good thing.
The going wasn’t always this good, mind you.
When Phar Lap was being led from trackwork the morning he won the Melbourne Stakes (later the Mackinnon Stakes) gangsters in a blue double-seater aimed a double-barrelled shotgun at the Melbourne Cup favourite and went blooey.
The belief is they were connected to bookmakers who stood to lose a fortune if he won the Cup three days later, which he did.
Phar Lap was a national hero by the time the crooks took a shot at him. Still, nobody thought to pull the palings off the fence, embedded with pellets, for a quick turnaround in the souvenir market.
They were Depression times, so nobody could have paid.
And besides, there was no internet to hawk it around, no instant celebrity. No fame according to how bankable somebody might be. No managers looking for their 10 per cent. No followers or friends or likes to bump up your popularity, the modern currency of fame.
WINX PIPS PHAR LAP IN WONDER RACE
In that regard, Winx retires as a traditional hero.
She is famous by virtue of her achievements, which seems so old fashioned now.
She is not known for the size of her backside, for instance, like Kim Kardashian, who outranks her in Twitter followers even though nobody is quite sure of what it is that Kim does. If it was all about the backside, which Google says is the case, then Winx has her beat there, too.
Winx is a lovely distraction, though.
A genuine hero in a sport that celebrates its champions the way it should.
She is like Phar Lap in that way.
Phar Lap was in the middle of winning four races over all four days of the Melbourne spring carnival when the crooks took their shot at him.
Nowadays, such a workload seems extraordinary, yet within hours of somebody trying to fill him with No.6 pellets Phar Lap was washed and watered and fed and sent out to win the Melbourne Stakes. On the Tuesday, he won the Melbourne Cup.
Thursday he took out the Linlithgow Stakes (now the TAB Multiplier, in a sign of the times) and the following Saturday he won the CB Fisher Plate (now the Queen Elizabeth).
Spoiling any thought he might have won after being freshened, he won the WS Cox Plate the week before the assassination attempt.
Phar Lap and Don Bradman were the twin heroes of The Great Depression.
Bradman, a phenomenon, couldn’t be loved quite like Phar Lap if only because there was never a market.
Phar Lap began racing in February 1929 and finished a disappointing last in the Nursery Handicap at Rosehill. The rest of his two-year-old season wasn’t much better. Briefly, they thought he might eventually be a good jumper.
He filled out nicely as a three-year-old, though, and won the AJC and Victoria Derbies among others and finished third in the Cup. He was on his way.
As Phar Lap began clicking up the wins, Australia continued through tough times.
He became a distraction from the Depression. Unemployment was at 29 per cent. Wheat and wool prices dropped significantly. Banks failed and investments collapsed.
It was inevitable rent went unpaid, so families were evicted. The nation was on the verge of civil unrest and the communists made their run.
Phar Lap emerged, safer than the banks and a whole lot more likeable. He was the one thing behind which the country could unite.
His three, four and five-year-old years he put together winning streaks of nine, 14 (from 16 races) and eight (from 10 races). He was vulnerable only at the beginning and ending of each preparation.
Naturally, housewives dealing with unreliable husbands squirrelled a little change away to back with the SP bookmaker, usually found behind the corner store counter, and make up for the shortfall from the old man. More than once he helped buy a little milk, some bread for breakfast.
He provided relief not just from the drudgery of Depression life, but the daily battle.
The tough times today are different. Industry has made the cost of living more affordable, interest rates are down and unemployment is manageable but the worries are different.
Crowds used to be safe places. Now they are a target for men in white vans filled with high explosives.
The internet was supposed to make us smarter and better but instead it has opened a world of trouble never imagined in Phar Lap’s times. There are a thousand new ways for the bad guys to rob us, abuse us or exploit us now.
Smart phones and social media makes everyone a reporter with a camera nowadays and, apparently, nearly all also come with a gripe.
The Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a May election on Thursday and, if recent history is anything to go by, we already know no matter who wins it they are long odds to survive even their next term.
Nobody has the attention span for it anymore. Once politicians were judged by their ideas. They were men of occasion.
Now they are judged by their soundbite. Their policies driven by polls. Their conviction strong until the next survey.
Times are easier but not simpler.
It reinforces why sport remains life’s distraction. There is nothing fake about Winx, like there was nothing fake about Phar Lap.
It is there for all to see, every time she walks on to a racetrack.
All that is left is to see how she endures.
Phar Lap cemented his credentials as an Australian legend when he found the essential Australian ending. He died tragically, with just enough mystery attached.
Like Les Darcy, and that other folk hero Ned Kelly, Phar Lap was at his peak in the Australian psyche when he suddenly haemorrhaged and died in strapper Tommy Woodcock’s arms in a California barn.
He was just five, and still racing.
It was devastating for the country. Still nobody is sure exactly why he died.
He stayed in our hearts, though, the way Winx slowly, illogically, wriggled into it now.
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