Winx looks a lock to one-up John Henry

Winx, the Australian internet phenomenon who doubles as a racehorse, runs again Saturday in search of her 24th straight win at Rosehill Gardens Racecourse just west of Sydney, the nation’s capital.

Rosehill’s most famous race is the Golden Slipper for 2-year-olds, a definitive event created in 1957 by Rosehill director George Ryder. On Saturday, Winx will try to win her third George Ryder Stakes, one of five Group 1 events for all comers on the Rosehill calendar.

If she wins – it feels funny typing “if” – Winx will have set a world’s record for Group or Grade 1 race victories. With 16 going in, she was tied with America’s John Henry, whose 16 Grade 1 wins spanned five seasons in the early 1980s, when he found his soulmate in trainer Ron McAnally.

John Henry ran 44 times between 1977 and early 1980 before dipping his toes in Grade 1 waters on March 16, 1980, one week after his actual fifth birthday. The occasion was the 1 1/2-mile San Luis Rey Stakes – which fittingly is part of the Santa Anita program Saturday – and already that year he had racked up wins in the San Gabriel and San Marcos at home and the Hialeah Turf Cup on the road. But the fans were skeptical, and John Henry was nearly 7-1 in the betting behind the established stars Flying Paster, Golden Act, and Balzac.

With Darrel McHargue on board, John Henry dogged the pace of Relaunch, who put up a good fight but was no match in the final sixteenth. The winning margin was 1 1/2 lengths over a firm course in a final time of 2:23, which equaled the partially downhill course record.

John Henry came back three weeks later for Grade 1 win No. 2 in the San Juan Capistrano Handicap, in which he gave 12 pounds to runnerup Fiestero and 13 to the mare The Very One, who finished third. After five races and a crosscountry trip in 14 weeks, McAnally gave John Henry a breather. Then, on May 26, 1980, he won the Hollywood Turf Invitational by a neck for Grade 1 No. 3.

There followed a four-race East Coast swing that netted him only the Grade 3 Brighton Beach. But when John Henry won his fourth Grade 1 race on Nov. 16, 1980, in the Oak Tree Invitational at Santa Anita, it was more than enough to secure his first of an unprecedented four Eclipse Awards as champion male turf horse.

Despite his easy win in the off-the-turf running of the 1980 San Marcos, as the new year dawned John Henry still was considered very much a grass specialist. His victory in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap on March 8, 1981 – over a field that included favored Flying Paster and champion Glorious Song – changed all that forever. That was the day John Henry became a breakout star, with the ability to add 10,000 fans to the gate any time he ran.

The rest of 1981 was a procession of Grade 1 success. John Henry won another San Luis Rey (No. 6), another Hollywood Invitational (No. 7), the Jockey Club Gold Cup (No. 8), and another Oak Tree Invitational (No. 9). He also won the first running of the Arlington Million, which was ungraded, though not for long. At the end of the day, John Henry was champion older male, turf male, and Horse of the Year, the first so honored since Fort Marcy, in 1970.

McAnally decided to await the March 7, 1982, Santa Anita Handicap for John Henry’s debut as a 7-year-old, hoping for a little mercy from racing chiefs Jimmy Kilroe and Lou Eilken. They answered with 130 pounds. John Henry countered with a race for the ages, battling the French beast Perrault to a head-bob at the end of the mile and one-quarter. Perrault got the bob, but bore out significantly in the process, and John Henry was declared the winner of Grade 1 No. 10.

Perrault turned the tables in the subsequent San Luis Rey, though John Henry came out of the race with a sore ligament. He returned in the autumn to win his third Oak Tree Invitational on Oct. 31, 1982, for Grade 1 No. 11, then concluded his season with a trip to the Japan Cup that was compromised by a bout of colic.

John Henry did not appear again until the summer of 1983, at the age of 8, with Chris McCarron now in the saddle. After a tough loss in the Arlington Million, they took their first Grade 1 event together on Dec. 11, 1983, in the Hollywood Turf Cup to give John Henry an even dozen.

Acting anything but his age, 9-year-old John Henry tore through the 1984 season, adding four more Grade 1 wins and topping the $6 million mark in record earnings. On May 28, 1984, he won his third Hollywood Invitational (No. 13) against a three-horse relay from Charlie Whittingham. On July 23, 1984, the Sunset Handicap became Grade 1 No. 14. On Aug. 26, 1984, John Henry returned to Chicago to win his second Arlington Million, by then a Grade 1 event, for No. 15. And in a final flourish that nailed down another Horse of the Year title, John Henry added the Turf Classic at Belmont Park on Sept. 22, 1984, for the sweetest possible 16th Grade 1 achievement.

So good luck to Winx. She could not be in better company.