Something remarkable happened during a preview screening of the feature documentary ‘A Horse Named Winx’ in Sydney last month. First of all, it’s hard to imagine that the vast majority of audience doesn’t know at least something of Winx’s feats: she wins, and wins … and keeps winning 33 straight times until she retires. So, how do you create drama out of a story everybody knows the ending to already?
Documentary filmmaker Janine Hosking has been able to convey the drama, beauty and sheer power of Winx to the extent that spontaneous cheers and applause filled the packed cinema when Winx comes from last to win the 2015 Sunshine Coast Guineas to start ‘the streak’. It erupts again when she runs down Red Excitement in the 2017 Chelmsford Stakes for a 12th straight win and reaches fever pitch at the site of Winx leaving her much-hyped rival Hartnell in her wake in the 2017 Cox Plate.
Interestingly, it took a non-racing person to tell one of racing’s greatest stories this well.
Hosking is an experienced filmmaker on a diverse range of topics, all of it done with a journalistic edge, but she knew nothing about horse racing before starting the project. Acclaimed Australian racing journalist Andrew Rule, who wrote ‘Winx: The Authorised Biography’, calls her “arty” and suggests that Hosking’s non-racing background might even have been beneficial.
“Look, Janine’s an expert filmmaker,” Rule said on the Idol Horse Podcast. “She doesn’t come to this from a sports background or a racing background. She knows very little about sport of racing. She’s really, you’d say, from the school of filmmaking of the sort of arty, film festival type films.
“One of her previous films was about Geoffrey Tozer, the great Australian pianist … he was a tragic figure, ended up an alcoholic. She did a very good documentary about him. That you would think wouldn’t be a great preparation for doing (a film about) Winx, but it is in this sense: she can see a story … and she knows how to tell it.”
“I made this movie for a general audience and for all age groups,” Hosking told Idol Horse. “I had been making some films on some heavy topics and I wanted to make a film that was inspiring and that it would work in the cinema space, that it would have the sound, the feeling, the vibe and the excitement that really take you on the highs and lows of the story.
“I didn’t know where the story would take us, I just had a gut feeling that there was more to the story than just 33 wins in a row.”
Hosking walks a fine line of storytelling. She doesn’t fall into the familiar trap of speaking in jargon-heavy language or colloquialisms – the secret language of racing – the type of language that can alienate newcomers, and she remains explanatory to just the right degree that it keeps the knowing racing crowd engaged. Let’s face it though, most rusted-on racing tragics would be happy to watch Winx’s race replays on a big screen and in surround sound.
Rule’s economy of words in narration keeps the story moving and his on-track interviews with the jockeys plotting to dethrone Winx take the viewer inside the race within the race. “I felt like I was being hunted,” Red Excitement’s rider Josh Parr says in one interview, while a one-on-one interview with Blake Shinn – who strategised his way to within a neck of Winx in her third Cox Plate aboard Humidor – is another that brings a rare insight into race riding.
Flowing throughout the film is the laconic wit and country charm of Hugh Bowman describing what it was like to have front row seats to the greatest show in racing, and providing insight into the all-consuming nature the horse’s fame created. Then there is the raw emotion of trainer Chris Waller. He is well-known for crying in the immediate aftermath of his big race wins, so it’s no surprise to see some tears, but the emotional release he shows here is on another level entirely.
Journalist Cameron Williams conducted the sit-down interviews with Waller and Bowman and said the interview with Waller, which was planed for three hours but stretched to six, “was like a bloodletting.”
“I was stopping him every 20 minutes or so and saying, make sure you want to go on with this?” Williams said on the Idol Horse Podcast. “And he said, yeah, it’s time to get this out. He said, ‘I’ve had this in my system for a long time and … I want to tell this story now and I want to keep going now. It was the rawest interview that I have ever conducted.”
Hosking says she didn’t want to make ‘propaganda’ and it is the film’s gripping third act that ensures it isn’t.
While the on-track exploits are well known, it is the untold story of Winx’s post-career complications giving birth to her first foal that has even those who think they know the full story on the edge of their seats.
Perhaps the greatest impact the film could have on the sport is the cut through to sceptics or those misinformed about the reality of horse racing.
Here’s an inside tip for racing fans: don’t wait for ‘A Horse Named Winx’ to find its way to a streaming service, catch this on the big screen when you can.
And bring a non-racing fan with you, they might just leave the cinema a fan as well.
