21 MOONEE VALLEY RACING CLUB 20 2016. Winx 2 By the time the 2016 Spring Carnival rolled around, I was fully engrossed in the great game. My interest in racing was gaining more traction than the Winx vs. Hartnell battle brewing in that year’s upcoming Cox Plate. I’d just experienced my first Caulfield Cup, where we had witnessed star mare Jameka bolt in under Nick Hall. Awesome. The best weekend of the year had rolled around and we were back to The Valley for another memorable Manikato Stakes night. This time it was memorable for the wrong reasons. Carnage, strip out. Eager and chomping at the bit, we committed the cardinal sin of losing most of our bank on Cox Plate Eve. Lesson two learned. Rebel Dane miraculously won the Maniakto at 60-1, and we were defeated men. We walked down Puckle St, tail between our legs, and made the executive decision to call Saturday off. “We’re not going tomorrow.” We spat the dummy, and rightly so. Entry into Cox Plate Day was all our money, so we figured staying home and trying to double it was a better strategy. Wrong again. A heavy dump of rainfall came on Cox Plate Day, just as we were about to head to the TAB. So we decided to stay home and sat down to watch the Channel 7 coverage. The great mare Winx was looking for back-to-back Cox Plates, up against Godolphin’s new poster boy Hartnell – who had toweled up the coming Caulfield Cup winner Jameka in the Turnbull. It was built as a match race and looked that way for most of those two special minutes. “But the two champs go together at the 600 metres. Hartnell’s hit the front, Winx is going with him, and they’ve turned it on! The great race is on here!” Greg Miles bellowed from the caller’s box. No sooner had Miles built up the spectacle, the race was over. Winx went past him under a vicelike Hugh Bowman grip, and it was lights out. “But this is a blitz. It’s a Winx blitz! Two in a row, and she joins the all-time greats of the turf.” We would later learn that the winning call from Greg Miles had come from a simple conversation at the urinal earlier that day.
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