Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rule, but this is not really Life and
Speaker 1: Crimes because recently, listeners, I've been doing a bit of moonlighting.
Speaker 1: I haven't been completely faithful to crime. I've been working
Speaker 1: here and there on the documentary film about the race
Speaker 1: horse called Winks. In fact, the documentary feature is called
Speaker 1: a horse named Winks. And it so happens that because
Speaker 1: I wrote a book about Winks, I was approached by
Speaker 1: a filmmaker called Jeanine Hoskin two or three years ago
Speaker 1: who asked me if I could lend them a hand,
Speaker 1: and I agreed to. And today my producer and friend
Speaker 1: and interlocutor, mister John Burton is going to ask me
Speaker 1: some questions about how we made a film about a
Speaker 1: race horse.
Speaker 2: Hello John, Hello Andrew.
Speaker 3: Hello listeners. Let's start at the very beginning, because I
Speaker 3: have to admit that side of our sessions here I
Speaker 3: don't really follow or keep up with the goings on
Speaker 3: of the turf. So if you could perhaps remind our
Speaker 3: listeners of the story of Winks.
Speaker 1: Well, there she was folding twenty eleven. She was sold
Speaker 1: for a relatively modest two hundred and thirty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: at the Magic Million Sales on the Gold Coast in
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen is a yeeling. She was bought by a
Speaker 1: consortium of pretty wealthy people, three different owners or groups
Speaker 1: of owners, two married couples, and a lovely old man
Speaker 1: called Richard Treweek, an old widower who's since left us.
Speaker 1: In fact, this film has been dedicated to his memory.
Speaker 1: And he's the man, Richard Treweek, who named Winks Winks
Speaker 1: for reasons listeners that we won't go into here, but
Speaker 1: which he expands on in the film, which is a
Speaker 1: very funny moment, I have to say, because his fellow
Speaker 1: owners are not sure what he's going to say. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Winks was a reasonably undistinguished yeeling. She was tall, she
Speaker 1: was leggy, she was quiet. She's a bay. A bay
Speaker 1: is like a reddish brown color with dark points, dark legs,
Speaker 1: and dark man and tail about. You know, seventy percent
Speaker 1: of thoroughbreds pretty well that color or roughly that brown
Speaker 1: or bay, and so she wouldn't really stand out in
Speaker 1: any gathering of thoroughbred horses anywhere. But she's breedy looking
Speaker 1: and she's reasonably tall as a yeeling. She was fairly light.
Speaker 1: She wasn't heavily built, but she was always athletic looking well,
Speaker 1: she got broken in and the nice man that broke
Speaker 1: her in the first one to ride it was an
Speaker 1: Indian guy called Amir.
Speaker 2: Who has worked all over the world.
Speaker 1: I think he's great grandfather worked for the Aga Khan,
Speaker 1: very interesting Indian horse family. He was the first man
Speaker 1: ever to ride Winks, a point he makes in the film.
Speaker 1: Very funny guy. And I asked him. I said me, now,
Speaker 1: you've handled several horses that fortnight or that month. Which
Speaker 1: ones did you really like? And he said, well, actually
Speaker 1: I liked the chestnut one better. I thought it was
Speaker 1: more sparky than the one that became Winks. But of
Speaker 1: course the chestnut one went to Queensland and won two
Speaker 1: races or something, and the other one that he quite
Speaker 1: liked went somewhere else and won one race or whatever,
Speaker 1: and Winks, the one he wasn't mad about, she became Winks.
Speaker 1: So it just shows you that over and over that
Speaker 1: horses race horses are a complete genetic raffle, and that
Speaker 1: Winks there was nothing to show that she had the
Speaker 1: championship qualities that indeed she did have.
Speaker 3: I remember we did an episode a long time ago,
Speaker 3: but listeners can still find. It was called The Winning
Speaker 3: Ways of Winks when I believe when your book was
Speaker 3: coming out, Oh, probably, and your interviewer at the time,
Speaker 3: a fine journalist, Chris Fernuccio. At the time, I think
Speaker 3: Winks was still running round or had just run its
Speaker 3: last race. Yes, true, and you had your manuscripts ready
Speaker 3: to go and were sort of hoping that all was
Speaker 3: going to work out. Fine.
Speaker 1: I think you're right there. It got a bit tense
Speaker 1: there for a while, and the people in the publishing
Speaker 1: industry were very believed when she won third Coxplate because
Speaker 1: we'd already embarked on the book, and then massively relieved
Speaker 1: when she won her fourth Coxplate in four consecutive Coxplate's
Speaker 1: never been done before. I am here to say probably
Speaker 1: won't ever be done again. Probably very few horses are
Speaker 1: going to be able to maintain that level of ability
Speaker 1: and soundness. There will be perhaps or sometime that is
Speaker 1: as fast as Winks over two thousand meters, but you know,
Speaker 1: to find one that can stay so doun and fit
Speaker 1: for four different years is just one in a million shot.
Speaker 3: So what was the record in the end?
Speaker 1: Well, Winks started out by winning three races as a
Speaker 1: two year old when she was very immature, skinny, not
Speaker 1: really filled out. She was the equivalent of sixteen year
Speaker 1: old netballer who hasn't finished growing yet.
Speaker 2: That's what she was like.
Speaker 1: But she had so much ability that she won her
Speaker 1: first three two year old races. Then she ran into
Speaker 1: a thing called first Seal, and first Seal was as
Speaker 1: happens with horses and people and every sort of mammal.
Speaker 1: First Seal was more mature. She was just she was
Speaker 1: bigger and stronger, and horses are a bit like that.
Speaker 1: Some grow faster than others and they've got an advantage
Speaker 1: over the rest for a little while. We've all seen
Speaker 1: it at school, where the strong guy in year nine
Speaker 1: by year twelve is just a little guy. And First
Speaker 1: Seal flogged Winks several times in that two year old
Speaker 1: and early three year old season. Then Winks started to
Speaker 1: grow and fill out and get stronger, and Winks once
Speaker 1: she hit her straps, she was great and the first
Speaker 1: win of what we call the streak. Now I'm calling
Speaker 1: Winks the freak with the streak because she had a
Speaker 1: winning streak of thirty three races that began in Queensland
Speaker 1: in early in the autumn of twenty fifteen at the
Speaker 1: Gold Coast, and she started in a race there. She
Speaker 1: was well in the betting. I think she might have
Speaker 1: been favorite, but she came out of the boxes fairly slowly.
Speaker 1: She's drawn pretty wide, she's had to go right around
Speaker 1: the field, and she's running at the back of the field.
Speaker 1: I think she was running last. And the rest of
Speaker 1: the field starting to string out towards the finish, and
Speaker 1: the caller is calling the leading group very tently and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, this one's leading, and someone says running second,
Speaker 1: and he didn't even notice because he's looking at the
Speaker 1: leading group. He didn't notice this thing with the jockey
Speaker 1: wearing the blue colors going around the outside, right around
Speaker 1: the field, right around the pack, as fast as a
Speaker 1: dog rounding up a mob of sheep.
Speaker 2: That's what it looked like. It looked like a kelpie.
Speaker 1: Rounding up sheep. Winks went past them so fast they
Speaker 1: nearly got windburn. And the caller, bless his heart, didn't
Speaker 1: see her until she swept into his vision. As he's
Speaker 1: watching the leaders. Suddenly Winks goes past his binoculars and
Speaker 1: he goes, oh, and here's Winks from the clouds or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, And it was a spectacular win. Two hundred
Speaker 1: meters out you would have said she couldn't win, and
Speaker 1: then at one point fifty meters you knew she was
Speaker 1: going to mow them down. Now, that day she was
Speaker 1: ridden by the veteran jockey Larry Cassidy. Larry rode champions
Speaker 1: like Sunline. He rode other champions. I think he rode
Speaker 1: saintly maybe once, but he certainly rode the best horses
Speaker 1: in the past. And on his way home from the
Speaker 1: races that day, after this relatively minor race at the
Speaker 1: Gold Coast, he rings his wife on the car phone,
Speaker 1: as he does jockeys the dangerous lives, and they ring
Speaker 1: home and say, I'm okay, I didn't fall off and whatever,
Speaker 1: and I'm heading home now, you know, do you need
Speaker 1: a pint of milk?
Speaker 2: Whatever? And she said, Larry, how was it today? But
Speaker 2: how did you go on? Wings? Oh? Yeah, I want.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think she's the best horse I've ever ridden.
Speaker 1: And there's a bit of a silence because missus Cassidy's
Speaker 1: no fool. And she said, but Larry, you rode Sunlight.
Speaker 1: He said, I think she might be better than Sunline.
Speaker 1: Now this was a massive call, and Larry didn't go
Speaker 1: back on it. Larry repeated this to Hugh Bowman, the
Speaker 1: Sydney jockey, the very fine Sydney jockey who couldn't ride
Speaker 1: Winks in Queensland that day because he had other commitments
Speaker 1: down south in Sydney, which tells you where she was
Speaker 1: in the pecking order. Then Bowman stayed in Sydney to
Speaker 1: ride other horses for Chris Waller and Larry, the local
Speaker 1: Queensland jockey rode, which just shows you where she was
Speaker 1: in the pecking order that is not that high. And
Speaker 1: Bowman rang Larry or Vicessa and said how to go?
Speaker 1: What happened and he repeated it. Larry said, I think
Speaker 1: she's the best I've ever ridden. And Bowman says, but
Speaker 1: you rode Sunline and he says, yeah, I still think
Speaker 1: she's the best I've ever ridden, and she could be
Speaker 1: a champion. And Bowman and he interviewed about this in
Speaker 1: the film. It's a great interview, and he says, well,
Speaker 1: I couldn't really quite believe him, you know, I thought
Speaker 1: it was he said, I thought it was a very
Speaker 1: big call. And Bowman says to himself, well that's a
Speaker 1: big call, but we'll see. So Bowman gets back on
Speaker 1: winks he's ridden her before in a loss or two,
Speaker 1: I think, and he rides in the Queensland Oaks and
Speaker 1: she wins the Queensland Oaks comprehensively, and then she wins
Speaker 1: another couple of races in Sydney which stamped the Oaks form,
Speaker 1: and then at about a fifth start after that, winning
Speaker 1: Queensland that starts the streak. She comes to Melbourne for
Speaker 1: the twenty and fifteen Cox Plate and at that stage
Speaker 1: she was just this horse with Queensland form, trained by
Speaker 1: Chris Waller Young, not well known down here, but obviously
Speaker 1: some respect. But you know, Cox plaits big deal. The
Speaker 1: previous year, the Coxplait had been won by an international
Speaker 1: raider called Adelaide, brought in here by the uber powerful
Speaker 1: racing family, the Magnia family from the Coolmore stud in Ireland,
Speaker 1: which is probably the world's most powerful stud and the
Speaker 1: greatest trainers and all that stuff. And the Magnias had
Speaker 1: flown in a horse called Highland Reel now Highland Real
Speaker 1: had won a group race in Europe, in Ireland or England,
Speaker 1: and he'd flown to America and he'd won a race there.
Speaker 1: Everywhere he'd gone, he'd won races. He was a very good,
Speaker 1: tough international competitor who'd won.
Speaker 2: Everywhere he'd been. Pretty well.
Speaker 1: He's flown into Melbourne, Tom Magnia, he's walking around.
Speaker 2: I saw him.
Speaker 1: He's walking around the bedding ring backing Highland really had
Speaker 1: pocketfuls of money cash. He dropped them on the ground
Speaker 1: and I picked it up and gave it back to him,
Speaker 1: and he said, good of you. I should and he said,
Speaker 1: you'd be very honest. He wasn't used to people giving
Speaker 1: money back to him, and they were quite confident that
Speaker 1: they would win another Cox plate.
Speaker 2: The cool more people.
Speaker 1: But despite that fact, Winks on the basis of track
Speaker 1: work earlier in the Coxplate work the Tuesday morning before Coxplait,
Speaker 1: there is a thing called Breakfast with the Best. I
Speaker 1: think it's called and have a big Cox plate breakfast.
Speaker 1: Horses work one by one or in twos. And I
Speaker 1: saw this thing Winks from Interstate, and thought, my god,
Speaker 1: I like the look of her. I love the way
Speaker 1: she gallops or something. Something caught my eye about her.
Speaker 1: And she was in the betting. It's not as if
Speaker 1: she was an outsider. She might have been a five
Speaker 1: or six dollars shot then, but Highland Reel was favorite.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say Winks would have been second or
Speaker 1: third in the betting. And I said to my boss
Speaker 1: at that stage, Peter Blunden, whose table I was on,
Speaker 1: I'm going to pack these thing Winks. And the day
Speaker 1: comes four days later, Coxplait day. She goes out and
Speaker 1: she put them to the sword. Now before the Coxplate,
Speaker 1: Chris Waller, her trainer, was interviewed, and he had two
Speaker 1: horses in the coxplity. He had her, and he had
Speaker 1: a I think a cult called Kerma Deck or an
Speaker 1: entire called Kermed Deck, who probably had some ambitions to
Speaker 1: be a a stallion.
Speaker 2: At start.
Speaker 1: They were probably pretty keen to make him into a
Speaker 1: stallion and to get a Coxplate win. And when while
Speaker 1: I was interviewed before the race, they said, now, which
Speaker 1: of your two horses should win?
Speaker 2: Do you think?
Speaker 1: And he said, oh, Kerma Deck. So point being, Winks
Speaker 1: was by no means a shoe in, and not even
Speaker 1: her own stable thought she would necessarily win the Coxplate.
Speaker 2: She just killed them.
Speaker 1: Now Bowman rode a good race. She did get a
Speaker 1: bit of luck in running. She saved ground she was
Speaker 1: on the fence. Later on in her career she never
Speaker 1: did that day, went wide to stay out of trouble
Speaker 1: on her. But this time she was pretty well on
Speaker 1: the fence or close to the fence, and there's two
Speaker 1: or three horses in front of her, and of course
Speaker 1: you've got to get through that wall of rumps, that
Speaker 1: wall of bums, as they say, or else she can't
Speaker 1: get you run up the straight, very short straight at
Speaker 1: Mooney Valley, smallest Group one racecourse in the world. I
Speaker 1: think it's a tiny racecourse with a very short straight.
Speaker 1: It's smaller than hanging rock or something, so very important
Speaker 1: to be able to get out and get some running room.
Speaker 1: And what happened was he was tracking that great Tasmanian
Speaker 1: cult horse called the Cleaner, and suddenly the Cleaner shied
Speaker 1: away from the fence. He shied away as if he
Speaker 1: saw a snake or something. He just went sideways and
Speaker 1: opened up this massive gap, and Winks just grabbed the
Speaker 1: bit and went straight through the gap. She went through
Speaker 1: it again like a kelpie going past sheep, and she
Speaker 1: speared through and she she got five lengths on the others,
Speaker 1: and she won it so easily and by a big
Speaker 1: margin and in very good time, very good time, and
Speaker 1: that was what set her up. I mean it was her.
Speaker 1: It might have been a fifth straight win. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think.
Speaker 2: Fourth or fifth, but that really set her up as
Speaker 2: something to watch.
Speaker 1: The parting of the horses, the parting of the horses,
Speaker 1: it was like the Red Sea, and that day it
Speaker 1: was great to see. You know, people say to you,
Speaker 1: what's her best wins? Well, there's a lot to choose from,
Speaker 1: and most of them are good and some of them
Speaker 1: are extra good. But that was the day I think
Speaker 1: she really stamped herself as champion material to win it twice,
Speaker 1: as she did. She won the following year after a
Speaker 1: secret bone ship operation which was not known at the time,
Speaker 1: little bone ship, but they operated on her and they
Speaker 1: had to get it all recuperated and then get her
Speaker 1: up for her Grand Final. That is a second Coxpade,
Speaker 1: which she won and I think set a track or
Speaker 1: race record which she subsequently broke herself. And third year
Speaker 1: she comes back and that was probably her greatest win
Speaker 1: because he took a very wide route around the field
Speaker 1: and wasted plenty of ground because he wanted to keep
Speaker 1: her out of trouble. And that meant that a horse
Speaker 1: trained by Darren Weir, a horse called Humidoor ridden by
Speaker 1: Blake Shin, was able to save ground, save ground, saveground,
Speaker 1: come up the inside and then pull out and try
Speaker 1: and sneak the race, sneak past her and get up,
Speaker 1: didn't get past her, got to her girth, got right
Speaker 1: up near her shoulder and gave everybody a fright except
Speaker 1: I think Hugh Bowman. I think Hugh Bowman was confident
Speaker 1: that the other horse could not get past her. He's
Speaker 1: got so much faith in Winks just producing that extra
Speaker 1: bit when it's needed, because in the end, I don't
Speaker 1: think she ever failed to produce extra when she had to.
Speaker 1: She was a freak in that respect. She could always
Speaker 1: find the extra yard when she had to. She never
Speaker 1: failed as a mature horse from four years on, never
Speaker 1: failed to find that extra few meters when she needed to.
Speaker 3: And that bone ship. I'd heard that story before, and
Speaker 3: did that come out in your most excellent book? Was
Speaker 3: that what was first published?
Speaker 1: It was in the book, and it's covered very nicely
Speaker 1: in the film. That bit because the film risks, of course,
Speaker 1: being a mash up of her wins. You know, ad
Speaker 1: music lots of winds, you know, good sports stuff. But
Speaker 1: the filmmaker, johnyne Hosking, is a professional, classy, expert filmmaker.
Speaker 1: She's not a horse person, she's not a sportsperson. She's
Speaker 1: just a good filmmaker. And I was able to translate
Speaker 1: the horse world for her a bit and to put
Speaker 1: her in touch with the right people and to organize her.
Speaker 1: But she made the film, and she shot the film,
Speaker 1: and she did all that film stuff, and I was
Speaker 1: able to just sort of assist and to do some
Speaker 1: narration and to write some script for narration, and that
Speaker 1: helped get her over the line. But it's her film,
Speaker 1: not mine, to be totally honest and fair, and she's
Speaker 1: done a great job because she's found two things that
Speaker 1: were obstacles in Winks's rise and Rise and Rise, and
Speaker 1: one was the bonship, but the other one comes after.
Speaker 1: It's the fight after the fight, and that is Winks.
Speaker 1: She wins her fourth coxplate, record breaking no one's ever
Speaker 1: won four coxplaits. She wins it in two thousand eighteen.
Speaker 1: The owners, the trainer, they go.
Speaker 2: What do we do? Should we biscuit? Should we go
Speaker 2: over sous?
Speaker 1: And in the end, I think vetts looked at her
Speaker 1: and they did X rays and they checked her all
Speaker 1: over and she was perfect. She was like brand new.
Speaker 1: She very very tough and sound. And Chris Waller said, well,
Speaker 1: there's no reason why she can't have one more preparation,
Speaker 1: one more autumn. That would give her four springs and
Speaker 1: four autumns. These are eight preparations against the best horses
Speaker 1: in Australasia and some inputs, right.
Speaker 2: And so that's what they did.
Speaker 1: They brought her back after her fourth Coxplate win when
Speaker 1: she had really nothing left to prove except to show
Speaker 1: that she could still do it, and they brought her
Speaker 1: back from the paddock and then got to fit again
Speaker 1: in for the Autumn Carnival and she went a clean
Speaker 1: sweep in Sydney of another I'm going to say another
Speaker 1: four wins, culminating that autumn in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes,
Speaker 1: which was her swan song.
Speaker 2: That was it.
Speaker 1: It was the final race and as we all know,
Speaker 1: she won it. It was marvelous to see her triumphant
Speaker 1: exit ranks in my mind with the greatest Australian sporting
Speaker 1: events of my lifetime now in my head, they are
Speaker 1: Milina Rose winning the World bantamweight title from fighting a
Speaker 1: rada at You know, he was ten to one against
Speaker 1: He was a kid.
Speaker 2: From rural Victoria, from Druan.
Speaker 1: He was nineteen. He goes to Japan to fight an
Speaker 1: absolute tough champion, a guy that was probably eight or
Speaker 1: ten years older, who was the real deal. And he
Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to He only got the fight at the
Speaker 1: last minute because somebody else pulled out and they thought
Speaker 1: this kid'll do and he went up there and beat
Speaker 1: him and it was wonderful. I can remember it clearly.
Speaker 1: I was about eleven and Lionel Rose was greeted much
Speaker 1: like the Beatles were when they arrived in Australia. There
Speaker 1: was something like two hundred and fifty thousand people lining
Speaker 1: the streets of Melbourne to cheer him. I mean it
Speaker 1: was mind blowing. That was a big one. Shane Gould
Speaker 1: the female swimmer. She was a schoolgirl when she swam
Speaker 1: in the Munich Olympics and won a swag of medals.
Speaker 1: I think she won three golds in the silver. She
Speaker 1: was fifteen or something. There was David Hooks, the late
Speaker 1: great David Hooks, who scored did he do five boundaries
Speaker 1: in the last five balls of the Big Test against
Speaker 1: England and was wonderful exhibition by basically a boy.
Speaker 2: He was just a kid.
Speaker 1: It had just been elevated to the Test side and
Speaker 1: he just brained it. And Winks. I think Winks fits
Speaker 1: into that suite of memories of great Australian sporting events,
Speaker 1: not the least of which, of course, Wasathy Freeman in
Speaker 1: the year two thousand winning at the Sydney Games when
Speaker 1: she won in the green suit. That was a standout
Speaker 1: thing that you would never forget. And each of those
Speaker 1: stories are so unlikely and so wonderful that any of
Speaker 1: them could sort of throw up an idea for a
Speaker 1: film in a way. In fact, I did actually work
Speaker 1: with some guys doing a Lionel Rose book which was
Speaker 1: based on their mini series called Rose Against the Odds.
Speaker 1: You know, it did throw up something. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of stuff done on Kathy Freeman,
Speaker 1: not so much on Shane Gould. I think she was
Speaker 1: very shy. But Winks is a valid subject for film.
Speaker 1: But the thing about racing and boxing is they are
Speaker 1: so inherently dramatic and so well done by the people
Speaker 1: and the horses that do it that you cannot hope
Speaker 1: to be as good as the real thing. If you
Speaker 1: are using actors and stunt men and all the rest
Speaker 1: of it, nothing is as good as those who are
Speaker 1: the pros, the professional boxes, professional jockeys and race horses.
Speaker 1: And so if you want to make a film about Winks,
Speaker 1: don't go off looking for stand ins and looking for actors.
Speaker 1: You've got to make a feature documentary. And that is
Speaker 1: what Janine Hosking has done. She's pulled together the real footage,
Speaker 1: the way that that fine filmmaker did with Edon Center
Speaker 1: the Formula one driver, and with Amy Winehouse, the late
Speaker 1: Amy Winehouse, the singer. To take all that real footage
Speaker 1: of actual events and all the interviews that have been
Speaker 1: done in the past and weave them together into a
Speaker 1: potent story that is better than some of its parts.
Speaker 1: That is what Janine Hosking has done with the Winks story.
Speaker 1: She's pulled together all these elements. She's done really searching
Speaker 1: interviews with the main players, Chris Waller, the trainer, Hugh Bowman,
Speaker 1: the jockey, the owners and others, and she's woven it
Speaker 1: all together into a tapestry that is really good. It's
Speaker 1: a really strong biopic Some people cry when they see
Speaker 1: bits of it. Some people cheer when they see bits
Speaker 1: of it. It really is quite moving. There's a trajectory
Speaker 1: to it. The stories I've told today are part of it,
Speaker 1: and that is, you know, will they beat the bone chip?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: They did.
Speaker 1: And the other one is how close she came to death.
Speaker 1: What the public didn't know in the year twenty twenty
Speaker 1: was how close Winks came to death. She had a
Speaker 1: stillborn fole. Her first file was stillborn, and that led
Speaker 1: to a complicated birth, and that led to her developing
Speaker 1: a form of colic. Horses often die of colic. Gutty
Speaker 1: is very complex and long, and it's easily upset, and
Speaker 1: they can get a twisted bowl on all sorts of
Speaker 1: different things and it can kill them. And she got
Speaker 1: this complicated collage and it's often fatal. And they operated
Speaker 1: once and it didn't work or didn't take and it
Speaker 1: was so serious that Tom Magnia, the guy I mentioned
Speaker 1: before who dropped the money on the floor, he runs
Speaker 1: Coolmore startup in the Hunter Valley. So it's funny how
Speaker 1: the enemy is now the friend. Tom magniare rings the
Speaker 1: owners of Winks and said you better come down tonight.
Speaker 1: We don't think she's going to make it. And you
Speaker 1: could hear a pin drop in the film when he
Speaker 1: says this. It's really grueling, and the owners all gather
Speaker 1: thinking this is it. Anyway, they operated again, this great
Speaker 1: team of vets at the Scone Equine Hospital and they
Speaker 1: all touched Wooden, cross their fingers and said their prayers
Speaker 1: backwards and she survived. Now she had the equivalent of
Speaker 1: five months in hospital. She was five months in probably
Speaker 1: a loose box not much bigger than this room than
Speaker 1: this studio, to stop her from moving around too much.
Speaker 3: So it's about three by three mad something like that.
Speaker 1: As she got better, they would lead her and all that,
Speaker 1: but they like compulsory bedrest. And she had a big
Speaker 1: bandage around her belly, massive bandage. Anyway, the day came
Speaker 1: when they took the bandage off and Tom Magney, the
Speaker 1: same guy, a great Irish voice. In an interview, he said,
Speaker 1: we knew, you know, she had the will to win,
Speaker 1: but she also had the will to live. Beautiful and
Speaker 1: it's just perfect. And that's one of the last scenes
Speaker 1: in the film, is that. But that's not the last thing.
Speaker 1: I'll leave that for people who want to go and
Speaker 1: it's a really good film. Jeanine Husking has done a
Speaker 1: lovely job. I'm relieved that you know that we're able
Speaker 1: to get away with it so well, and that it's
Speaker 1: come up better than I expected it would, and I
Speaker 1: thoroughly endorse it. I think it's a good way to
Speaker 1: spend tight ass Tuesday somewhere. It opens in ninety cinemas
Speaker 1: around Australia in early September.
Speaker 3: Fabulous and you are the narrator Greek chorus.
Speaker 1: I am a narrator and I wrote script, which most
Speaker 1: of which I deliver myself.
Speaker 3: So in cinemas probably by the time this goes to.
Speaker 1: Where by the time this goes to where it will
Speaker 1: be opening all around the place and thousands of Australians
Speaker 1: will be flocking to enjoy it.
Speaker 2: I hope. Thank you, John, Thank you Andrew.
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