THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN: THE MIGHTY WINX AND THAT AURA OF INVINCIBILITY

By Graham Potter | Friday, March 1, 2019

Graham Potter writes a weekly column for the Sunshine Coast daily. Due to demand from those having trouble accessing the paper these columns are now also published on HRO courtesy of the Sunshine Coast daily.

Winx’s aura of invincibility is now all so encompassing that its impact can be felt in every race in which she takes part long before the champion mare sails past the post to claim another victory.

In fact, it is felt as early as nominations and final acceptances.

This weekend’s Group 1 Chipping Norton Stakes provides the perfect example of Winx’s complete dominance of proceedings with only six runners prepared to take her on in a $600 000 race where prize money for running second amounts to $114 000 and, if they could have found more ‘volunteers’, stake money would have been paid out all the way down to tenth placing.

Oh, and by the way, five of those six runners ‘taking her on’ are stablemates of Winx. Without trainer Chris Waller submitting those entries what would the Chipping Norton field have looked like?

It is like Winx’s aura has vaporised almost all of the opposing stables forces. You don’t see them because they don’t want to be there. They don’t want to be there because they don’t want their horse’s hearts to be broken in an uneven contest. They don’t even want to take the chance that Winx might develop a temperature or have some setback and be scratched.

They just don’t want to come near.

That is the subliminal power of the Winx legend … beating most potential rivals even before they set foot on the track. Then, when the race action starts … well, we all know what happens then. Thirty successive victories show how firmly her crown has stayed in place.

Winx’s is currently orbiting in such a stratosphere that now, almost with each passing run, a new record falls. If she wins it will be her fourth Chipping Norton Stakes victory – matching the record of Tie The Knot.

Better than that, if she wins, Winx will set a new world record for the most Group 1 victories in racing’s history as she will move out of a tie with the Willie Mullins trained hurdler Hurricane Fly and take her Group 1 winning total to twenty-three. (As a point of reference, Black Caviar won fifteen Group 1’s).

If she wins? You’re right. Those words are probably superfluous.

Though this is racing we are talking about, where it is a given that there are no certainties, nobody expects anything else but a Winx victory. If the day of a shock defeat ever arrives, as unlikely as it might be, it will diminish nothing in terms of what the Winx team has achieved.

She is a champion to be enjoyed by all and the chances are, as her career enters its final stages, the Chipping Norton will provide everybody with another opportunity to do just that.