WITH ALL DUE RESPECT to the fillies running in this Saturday’s Grade 1 Alabama Stakes at the Spa, the real wonder woman, the real Amazon, the Beast from the East, is running Saturday at Royal Randwick (Friday night at 10 p.m. PT, 7 p.m. ET for those in the States) on the other side of the world going for an unspeakable 26 straight victories.
Echoing Herman Melville, Call her Winx.
As if horse racing wasn’t already an esoteric sport to follow and learn about, try following international racing, which is run almost exclusively on—Nick Zito cover your ears—grass!
Rumor has it that Marvel Studios has cast Winx as Captain Marvel and has given the seven-year-old daughter of Street Cry her own stand-alone movie ahead of Avengers 4. I just report the news.
To be frank, and embarrassingly so, I hadn’t even heard of Winx until I had a great conversation with TVG’s Candice Hare a couple weeks ago. She’s the on-air personality responsible for commenting and handicapping clockwise racing.
The Wonder Mare, as she’s often called, strides for her 26th consecutive win. We haven’t seen anything like that in the States since Zenyatta before she was halted at 19 in the 2010 Breeders’ Cup. Like Zenyatta, Winx often tracks the field from behind and comes SCREAMING (all caps) down the track in the final 200 to 300 meters (#metricsystem).
Watching her run down the leaders is about as thrilling a thing to watch in this silly game. She extends her stride and lays down her belly on the track, digs that Street Cry-face down and out in a momentous display of determination and grit. I just got goose bumps writing that 28-word sentence. Why? How is that? Just watch her, man.
There’s a frantic yet composed desire to get to the front, a hunger of purpose, a single-minded resoluteness that radiates outward.
You know that feeling when you watch someone at the top of their game perform and it somehow makes you want to be better at everything you do? Like Jack Nicholson’s character in As Good As It Gets, Winx makes me want to be a better man.
I’m not so sure I’ve felt this way about a horse’s running style since Shackleford, a horse who, similarly, leveled out and lowered himself to the ground to get that extra bit of ground below him.
It could be that certain horses simply pluck the strings in a certain way. It could also be when watching someone perform at a level that defies superlative, you bask in it, soak in it, until your skin is pruney.
And the best part? Ten, count ’em, 10, rivals are taking her on Saturday in the Group 1 $500,000 Winx Stakes (yes, that’s a race re-named for her, and fitting it could be the race that separates this mare from another, Black Caviar).
Four Group 1 winners join the field: Kementari, Ace High, D’Argento, and Unforgotten.
With the exception of the Breeders’ Cup Classic and Kentucky Derby in the States, how many races of this nature card a big, competitive field with a seemingly indestructible horse committing?
The minute you start to follow the Wonder Mare, you feel that palpable sense of tension. I didn’t feel this way when Justify went to the gate in the Belmont. I did feel this way when American Pharoah went to the gate because the near four-decade wait and because if not him, then whom?
And there’s something to be said for jumping on an international star to educate a horse player or racing fan of the major differences, well, everywhere but here.
E.g. Group 1 winner Alizee, owned by Godolphin, suffered a bleeding attack during a recent workout. Under Australian rules, a horse who bleeds through both nostrils is put on the DL for three months to heal up.
It was, to quote Alizee’s trainer James Cummings, a “great shame,” but how great is it to see these horses and mares get that kind of attention, mandatory time off to recuperate, this in jurisdictions that have zero patience/tolerance for the racing medications and cocktails routinely administered to North American horses.
To me, it’s a more pure form of racing, racing that isn’t as tainted and littered with as many nasty misgivings. Horse racing will always have a seedy underbelly, but outside the United States, that underbelly seems to get a little bit of sun.
I had always discounted international racing because I used to have this odd dirt prejudice, but when there’s a horse of Winx’ stature, and stone-cold ability, it opens your eyes to the light and shows you another way, that the grass, in this case, is greener on the other side.
Brendan O’Meara is a freelance writer and author of Six Weeks in Saratoga. He also hosts The Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Follow him on Twitter @BrendanOMeara.
