Winx, Bowman face biggest test
TRULY great sports champions make the remarkable look easy. Hugh Bowman is one of them. His long list of rides on Winx may have looked to some as journeyman performances on a champion that anyone could have achieved. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Bowman had to apply true genius to Winx’s first three races in her previous preparation, each of which would have been out of the money without Bowman’s brilliance.
The thing is you do not see it. When wife Christine was this week asked to describe her husband in two words she said: ‘‘Deep thinker’’, something the champion horseman disguises well in his raceday persona.
If Bowman’s deadpan face looks somehow out of place when under so much pressure as he walks Winx out on to the track for each race, it is because of a rare temperament, and because he has done his homework down to a split second.
Bowman put his head on the pillow last night knowing of all Winx’s races in the last two years he has to get today’s $A4 million ($NZ4.22 million) Queen Elizabeth Stakes ride exactly right to the fraction of a second. Because more than in any of her previous races he has to estimate the speed, which will determine the result.
As he said yesterday: ‘‘I’ve got to make sure she’s close enough, but not too close, in case the speed is slack, and back enough, but not too far back, in case there is real pace on.’’ No wriggle room there.
This will be the most tactical race since Winx ran in her first Cox Plate two and ahalf years ago, he said.
If Winx records yet another champion milestone, spare a thought for Bowman’s judgement to overcome Kerrin McEvoy, Mark Zahra, Blake Shinn, Craig Williams, Joao Moreira. Andrew Adkins, Michael Walker, Damian Lane and Jason Collett, all outstanding horseman out to bring Winx and Bowman undone.
But then that is why they are the world’s champion racehorse and the world’s champion jockey.
Go you good things. — NZME