World champion mare Winx completed the fairy tale ending to her remarkable career with her third win in the Group 1 $4m Longines Queen Elizabeth Stakes (2000m) on Day Two of The Championships at Randwick today.
Winx, above, wins her final; race start in the 22019 Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick. Photo by Steve Hart.
Today’s win was Winx’s thirty-third victory in succession, her twenty-fifth Group 1 win and trainer Chris Waller’s one hundredth Group 1 win.
Winx jumped from the outside gate in the nine horse Queen Elizabeth Stakes field and Hugh Bowman settled her in the middle of the pack in the early stages of the race.
The outsider in the field Mask Of Time set the pace and Winx settled perfectly for Bowman in sixth position.
The pace started to quicken at the 600m and that’s when Bowman asked Winx to start to move forward.
Bowman had Winx out of trouble and four and five wide on the home turn and she quickly went past all of her rivals to record a one and a half lengths win on the Japanese visitor Klugger ($51) with one of her old rivals Hartnell ($26) in third place ahead of Happy Clapper ($31) in fourth.
The capacity Randwick crowd of 50,000 went up as one as Bowman released the brakes half way down the straight and Winx responded for the last time in only the way she knew.
Winx once again was sent out as the very short priced $1.06 favourite and didn’t let her huge legion of fans down.
For Waller it was a relief and a triumph to have prepared the greatest race horse of the modern era who won a quarter his one hundred Group 1 wins.
“It is a special moment to share with my beautiful wife and my beautiful children,” Waller said.
“I can’t describe it in words, but thanks to all the people around the world for appreciating her for what she is.”
“It is an amazing experience. It is great for our sport, it is great for Australia.”
“My team have just done an amazing job. It is rare they get the accolades. Racing for four years against the very best.”
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