Hugh Bowman on Winx, Pressure, and Purpose: “Nothing Keeps You Motivated Like a Good Horse”
Six years after Winx’s farewell, the Hall of Famer opens up to Idol Horse from a Hong Kong cafe about life after racing’s greatest mare, the emotional toll of perfection, and finding new drive in a cutthroat city where only the best survive.
Hugh Bowman on Winx, Pressure, and Purpose: “Nothing Keeps You Motivated Like a Good Horse”
Six years after Winx’s farewell, the Hall of Famer opens up to Idol Horse from a Hong Kong cafe about life after racing’s greatest mare, the emotional toll of perfection, and finding new drive in a cutthroat city where only the best survive.
24 October, 2025
IT’S HARD TO KNOW if the job of riding Winx was a blessing or a burden.
Sure, Hugh Bowman and the jockeys of his generation will never get the chance to sit on an athletic beast the like of her again, so nimble, and with a cadence of her stride so incomparable, the longer it went the more noticeable her edge was.
Yet it’s hard not to think of also the insufferable pressure applied to those who had anything to do with her: trainer, owners, strapper, truck driver, even the poor starter who prayed she left the barriers cleanly. Then, there was her jockey. Can you imagine what it was like for him with millions around the world watching his every twitch of the reins?
It’s easily forgotten now, but the last time Bowman took a deep breath shortly after Winx’s farewell race at Royal Randwick in 2019, her 33rd straight win to cap a four-year unbeaten sequence to end her career, he leaned over to give her a kiss. The occasionally cantankerous mare simultaneously threw her head back, and clocked her faithful jockey.
It split Bowman’s bottom lip. Thanks for everything! The last time he faced the television cameras after a race to speak about Winx, he stood there with a tissue trying to stem the bleeding, the literal finale of a horse which left a parting gift for her rider.
“I don’t talk about her that often actually, but it’s lovely to reminisce,” Bowman says. “It just goes to show in six years since retirement, the English and world media talk about her like she was racing six months ago. That’s the profound effect she had on the global racing community. Time moves on but the association we had together will live, I’m sure, throughout my lifetime.”
Bowman isn’t surrounded by a heaving Royal Randwick crowd as his mind wanders back to the golden era of Australian racing, yet a near empty café in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district. The shops have only just opened after the city’s T8 warning has been lifted from Tropical Storm Tapah sweeping across the coastline.
Bowman’s eldest daughter, Bambi, was probably too young to fully appreciate the Winx rollercoaster, but listens intently over lunch as her Australian racing Hall of Fame dad opens up in the twilight of his career.
It’s impossible not to think of Winx when you think of Bowman, like it’s impossible not to think of Bowman when you think of Winx. Bowman had already been an elite jockey in Australia before a neatly put together filly started showing promise. In the next few years, Bowman was a regular on the front pages of Australian newspapers because of his partnership with Winx, which brought 25 Group 1 wins.
Her racing days are long over, but it’s only now as he speaks to Idol Horse the 45-year-old jockey can fully articulate the come down after he’d finally mopped up the blood from that bottom lip.
“I think my motivation went south, my discipline to a degree wasn’t as high as what it was during that time, and emotionally it was exhausting,” he says.
“I’m over it now. There’s no doubt it took a physical and emotional toll on not only me, but the people around me. You don’t recognise it at the time because you’re just on a journey and she had a program that had to be met, and you just meet it.
“It would be like trying to get a football team to play eight grand finals a year. Can you emotionally get that team to do that? If you did, after four years it would be a tired team. That’s the best way I can describe it.”
These days, the memories are still there but the motivation is coming from a different source: continually trying to better his standing in the cutthroat Hong Kong scene, which has jolted his career at a time when he might have needed it.
Bowman was no stranger to fly-in, fly-out visits from Australia for Hong Kong’s biggest races, but a couple of years ago he answered a call from the Jockey Club, who challenged him to move his family, wife Christine, and two daughters there permanently in the post-Joao Moreira era.
He admits it’s been a “lifestyle change and an adjustment”, particularly given his background from a small town in regional NSW in Australia, which comes with plenty of space and few neighbours.
“I love it,” he says. “We’re settled in now. From strictly a work side of things, it’s come at a really good time in my career. I’ve had a successful couple of years since coming, which is vital. It’s a very cutthroat environment, and if you’re not performing, opportunities dry up pretty quickly.”
Opportunities haven’t dried up at all for Bowman.
It might have been natural to think the Australian arrived in Hong Kong with credentials to probably not push Zac Purton in the title race, but to at least erode his enormous margin as the Jockey Club’s top dog (Bowman finished a distant second in the jockeys’ premiership in 2024-25).
But Bowman is realistic: Purton has built an unrivalled base of trainers and owners on speed dial, and he also can’t ride anywhere near the weight required to match Hong Kong’s record breaker.
“Obviously, people want to create a rivalry and I’d love nothing more than to challenge Zac, but I’ve got to be realistic about things too,” he says. “Trying to set a goal to take him on is ridiculous. Literally, if I wanted to do that, I would need to ride four or five pounds lighter, which is out of my range.
“You’ve got to sometimes be satisfied with where you’re at. Those competitive juices never leave you, but I’d rather focus on quality not quantity, and enjoy my lifestyle as well. I ride at a comfortable weight. At times, I probably should push a bit more, but I push when I need to push. I feel like it’s a good balance and my age and maturity allows me to balance that.
“I’d rather improve on what I can do, and if I can push up beyond 80 to 90 winners this season, it’s a realistic goal and I could go away being very happy with that.”
It’s a statement which is perhaps a reflection of Bowman, one of the deepest thinkers on horseback in the modern era. He’s considered with his thoughts, which are never outrageous, and often straight to the point.
Topic of conversation turns to Hong Kong’s champion sprinter Ka Ying Rising, which won Sydney’s A$20 million The Everest in the weeks after this interview, and his own future in the saddle.
Bowman has had the unenviable task of watching David Hayes’ superstar do things for Purton like Winx did for him: take over mainstream media as a nation swarms behind a national hero with each win. Bowman has tried to chase Ka Ying Rising down enough to know it’s almost impossible.
“He could be the best sprinter we’ve seen,” Bowman says. “I mean that. Once the gates open, he’s really got no chinks in his armour.”
But it doesn’t mean Bowman still hasn’t got eyes on winning a first Everest – even if the Jockey Club are likely to send Ka Ying Rising, form and fitness pending, back to defend his crown in 2026.
As he tries to win his 100th Group 1 in Australia on Chris Waller’s mare Aeliana in the Cox Plate at Moonee Valley on Saturday, Bowman is slaloming between the final items on the bucket list for his career, which has had it all. Namely, The Everest and Melbourne Cup, which has always been a tricky race for him because of his weight restriction.
“I wouldn’t have one or the other at the top of the list,” Bowman says. “The Everest is right up there and if I could win a fifth Cox Plate it would be pretty special too.
“So, like any athlete I want to be competing in the big races. You need a lot of things to line up. My focus is here in Hong Kong now and that’s how it needs to be, so I’m respectful of that. I’m very appreciative of the opportunity here.
“Yet the Melbourne Cup would be a childhood dream. As it stands now in this part of my life and career, it probably doesn’t carry as much weight as what it did when I was younger.
“But I’ve had the pleasure of winning races like that and the feeling of winning is something … you actually can’t describe. It’s almost like I want it so much I dare not to dream.”
Bowman will be dreaming for a little longer yet.
He’s supposed to be at an age when the body starts breaking, the mind might starts going a little manic, but he’s showing no signs of that yet. The “r” word can wait for a while.
Purton, daylight, Bowman is not a bad batting order.
“It’s more a case of what would I do if I stopped?”
Get out of the sauna and play endless rounds of golf, maybe?
“I can’t do nothing,” Bowman says. “It’s a very demanding role, physically and mentally, to be a professional jockey, particularly at a high level.
“I feel like if my motivation is good and my weight is good, things are smooth for me. If I’m lacking motivation or working too hard to ride, my focus is not as good, I don’t concentrate as well and I make mistakes. All these things I’m aware of.
“Nothing keeps you motivated like a good horse.”
Even one that headbutts you on her way out the door. It might just make the blood, sweat and tears all worth it. ∎
