Champion horse Winx stars in new documentary film

Champion Australian racehorse Winx always had showbusiness in her veins. And so it has proven, with the advent of a new film.

Winx, one of the country’s greatest race horses, was memorlialised with her own stamp. The horse is the star of a new documentary film.

Champion Australian racehorse Winx has show business in her veins. Her mother was a striking mare named Vegas Showgirl. Winx was named for what men tend to do to her dam’s human equivalents on the nightclub stage.

“She’s a silent movie star,’’ says Sydney-based filmmaker Janine Hosking, who has the reins on the upcoming documentary A Horse Named Winx.

The show’s screenwriter, journalist-author Andrew Rule, compares Winx with the aloof Greta Garbo, and the mare backed up that impression the first time the director met her.

“It was a cold, windy day at Coolmore (the NSW stud that is one of Winx’s post-racing homes), she was pregnant and wasn’t in a good mood at all,’’ Hosking says.

“She wasn’t interested in filming and when we approached she ran away — fast. She had that look in her eye, summing us up. That was the day I fell in love with her.”

The key word there is “fast”. It’s the attribute that saw a lot of Australians fall in love with Winx, not least her owners, trainer Chris Waller and regular jockey Hugh Bowman, all of whom are interviewed.

Racehorse Winx is seen with the 2017 Cox Plate Trophy at the Waller Stables between Debbie Kepitis (Left), Ben Caddie (2nd from left) and Umut Odemislioglu at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne in 2017 (AAP Image/James Ross)

Winx raced between 2014 and 2019, winning a world record 25 Group 1 races (the highest level), including an unprecedented four Cox Plates, the race at Melbourne’s Moonee Valley racecourse that is considered Australia’s elite equine contest. Her career earnings topped $26m. As a mum, her first foal sold for a world record $10m. At her all-conquering peak, as she won race after race, building to 33 consecutive wins before she retired, she became known as the “people’s horse”, and it is this public sentiment the director hopes to tap into.

“I want to take the audience on a ride, to make them feel like they are sitting on Winx. The romance side of racing is about the great horses, like Phar Lap, and I hope the Winx magic can be relived on the screen.”

The director captures this with race footage shown from different angles, with the focus on wherever Winx is in the pack of charging horses. What this Winx-cam shows is her iron will to win.

Hugh Bowman riding trackwork Winx. (Photo by Mark Evans/Getty Images)

Hosking had a pony as a child and grew up loving films such as My Friend Flicka, Black Beauty and National Velvet, but a four-legged mute is a leap for her as a filmmaker.

Her previous documentary subjects include fire attack victim Tjandamurra O’Shane, for which she won a Walkley Award, Schapelle Corby, country singer Chad Morgan and pianist Geoffrey Tozer.

One of the remarkable aspects of her new film is how emotional Waller is during their six-hour interview, five years after Winx left his stables. The final question he’s asked is what he would say to Winx right now.

I ask the director the same. What would you say to Winx right now?

“I wish you could talk!,’’ she says with a laugh. “I have so many questions I’d like to ask you.”

A Horse Named Winx is in cinemas from September 5.