AFTER stumbling out of the blocks to win a $15,000 maiden at Scone, not even the most optimistic pundit could have predicted that Gust Of Wind would go on to win one of Australia’s premier staying races in the 2015 Group 1 ATC Australian Oaks just four weeks later.

The win was remarkable, but what elevates the result to legendary status is the horse that ran second — Winx.

That’s right, the last horse to beat Winx was an upstart nobody.

And the upstart paid a heavy price for that victory, but more on that later.

Let’s revisit just how that upstart toppled arguably the greatest horse in history.

A late entrant to The Oaks after a battling fourth in the Adrian Knox Stakes at Randwick on Easter Monday, Trainer John Sargent decided to pay the $22,000 late entry fee into the race and offered Tye Angland the ride.

Angland knew his mount lacked the class to beat the field if he let the favourites have the run of the race, and he had a plan on how to stop that happening.

“You look at her runs and she’s definitely a staying filly, she hasn’t got a turn of foot,’’ Angland said after the race.

“I felt I was going good enough to really serve it up to them from about the 600m and get them off the bridle and chasing a long way out.

“In doing that I broke their hearts and they just couldn’t catch me.’’

And Winx? Well her connections certainly remember the day Hong Kong’s ‘Magic Man’ Joao Moreira earned the wrath of punters for failing to find a way home on the $2.80 favourite.

“I certainly do remember it,” Tighe said. “They expected her to come to the fore over that distance (2400m), but it just didn’t go to plan that day.

“I would say she was an unlucky second. The way the race was run didn’t suit. The winner got a break on the home turn and we couldn’t make up the ground.”

Gust Of Wind might have got a break that day but she couldn’t catch one for the rest of her career — she never won another race.

Having stamped her credentials with The Oaks victory, her stable set Gust Of Wind on a course to tackle the Caulfield/Melbourne Cup double.

And she made a fair fist of that challenge. After finishing just out of the placings, four lengths fourth, in the Caulfield Cup she flew home in the Frankie Dettori marred 2015 Melbourne Cup (won by Michelle Payne on Prince of Penzance) recording the second quickest final 400m of the race to finish sixth in the race that stops the nation.

After just 10 starts, Gust Of Wind had won a Group 1 and matched it with the best stayers in the world, a big future looked assured.

It was not to be.

The mare, returned from a spell and ran 10th of 11 in the Apollo Stakes (1400m). No disaster, the race was just a tune-up for a horse with longer trips ahead.

Her next start saw Gust Of Wind finish stone motherless last, 12 lengths off the winner in the Group 1 Chipping Norton (1600m).

Given a short spell, she was set for aneasier grade and over a favourable 1900m in the Group 3 Epona Stakes.

Last again. Alarm bells were ringing.

Another spell, and back to the track in September 2016 in the Group 2 Tramway Stakes over 1400 metres.

Nobody expected the mare to challenge for the win.

Nobody expected her to finish 40 lengths off the winner either.

Jockey Josh Parr felt ‘something amiss with her’ and pulled her out of the race. It was obvious something was wrong. A veterinary examination discovered the mare had suffered a heart fibrillation and she was retired to the broodmare paddock never to race again.

And Winx? Winx has done nothing but won since that eventful day in 2015.