Australia’s champion race mare Winx is set to sneak past Black Caviar’s record of twenty-five consecutive wins when she kicks off her 2018 Cox Plate defence in the Group 1 $500,000 Winx Stakes (1400m) at Randwick on Saturday.
Winx, above, is the odds on favourite for the Winx Stakes at Randwick. Photo by Ultimate Racing Photos.
Retired premiership winning trainer Peter Moody prepared Black Caviar to remain undefeated from twenty-five starts, a mark Winx reached with her win in the Group 1 $4m Longines Queen Elizabeth Stakes (2000m) at Randwick on April 14, day two of The Championships.
Moody can’t see Winx not surpassing Black Caviar’s undefeated run of successes but still holds his mare in great esteem after she never tasted defeat.
“She’s (Winx) an absolute superstar,’’ Moody told News Corp Australia Network.
“She might be the best we’ve ever seen. I don’t know. She’s certainly well up there.
“ … barring misadventure or misfortune, it is impossible to see her getting beaten there again. She’s great for racing, she creates interest, she puts bums on seats.”
“I am not going to suggest Black Caviar is better than any of them, the modern champions or previous champions, but the one thing I can say is put all their records together on a wall and only one of them was ever undefeated.”
Winx doesn’t have the honour of being undefeated, the Chris Waller trained super star is the winner of twenty-nine of her thirty-five race starts, but has greeted the judge in first place at her last twenty-five starts with the winning sequence kicking off with a last to first victory in the Group 3 $125,000 Sunshine Coast Guineas (1600m) at the Sunshine Coast during the 2015 Queensland Winter Carnival.
Along the way Winx has won eighteen Group 1 races which includes three consecutive wins in the Group 1 $5m Ladbrokes Cox Plate (2040m) at The Valley in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Winx will start an odds on favourite when she resumed for the 2018 Spring Racing Carnival in the race has been renamed in her honour after she has won it twice when it was previously called the Warwick Stakes run at Group 2 level in 2016 and 2017.
Winx has had two barrier trials in preparation for the return to the race track and trainer Chris Waller is delighted her progress in the lead up to the Winx Stakes.
“I can’t fault her,” Waller told AAP.
“She is a happy horse, a fit horse and seems like she always does.
“She is not a complicated horse to train.
“It would be a great honour to win the race named after her.”
Group 1 winners D’Argento, Comin’ Through and Unforgotten will be among several of Winx’s stablemates that will line up against her in the first Group 1 race of the Spring Carnival.
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