Australian wondermare Winx, ranked by Longines as the best racehorse in the world, avoided a trip to Royal Ascot this year in order to go for an unprecedented fourth successive Cox Plate and she is set to make her comeback in a race named in her honour.

The Street Cry mare will resume in the A$500,000 Group 1 Winx Stakes over 1400 metres at Royal Randwick on August 18, Racing New South Wales reported. Formerly known as the Group 2 Warwick Stakes, Winx was successful in the 2016 and 2017 editions and it was consequently upgraded to Group 1 status and named in her honour. Prior to the Winx Stakes, the six-year-old will run in two barrier trials, the first one being late this month.

Winx (sahracing.com)

“She’ll run over 1400m first up,” trainer Chris Waller told Racing NSW. “The Winx Stakes is where she’ll run. It makes it a little bit easier to prepare her here in Sydney.”

The winner of her last 25 trips to the post, the dark bay has pleased Waller in her recent trackwork with regular rider Hugh Bowman aboard.

Waller said, “Her attitude and body language is great. We’ve been training her long enough to almost be used to it. The first year was just like training any other horse, the second year the pressure was on with the expectation to keep her performing. The third year she went to a whole new level again, getting close to Black Caviar’s records and other records, but now she has reached her fourth year, it’s just like last year but we’ve been there before. I’m actually feeling quite relaxed about her.”

On March 24 this year Winx set a new worldwide mark for Group 1 wins when she hit 17 in Rosehill’s Group 1 George Ryder Stakes over 1500m. Three weeks earlier when winning the Group 1 Chipping Norton Stakes over 1600m at Randwick she had broken Black Caviar’s Australian Group 1 record, Then in her last start on April 14 in the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth Stakes over 2000m at Randwick she equalled Black Caviar’s Australian record of 25 consecutive wins, just five years and one day after the latter had been retired unbeaten. Winx was defeated six times as a three-year-old but her 25 consecutive victories were all in stakes races, including 18 Group 1s, six Group 2s and one Group 3. On 17 May 2017, it was announced that Winx would be inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame, becoming only the third horse (after Sunline and Black Caviar) to be so honoured while still in training.

She will now be attempting to join the like of South Africa’s Pocket Power in the history books as the winner of the same major race four times in succession. Pocket Power won four Grade 1 L’Ormarin’s Queen’s Plates in succession from 2007 to 2010 and Legal Eagle will attempt to emulate him next year. The only horse in history to have won the same major race five times in succession is the 1957 born USA horse Kelso. He won the Jockey Club Gold Cup, which today carries Grade 1 status, every year from 1960-1964.

The Cox Plate run over 2040m at Moonee Valley in late October is Australia’s most important middle-distance, weight for age race and carries huge prestige as well as an $Aus 5 million stake, which is the equivalent of close to R50 million.

Winx has earned $Aus18,998,420 in stakes to date.

By David Thiselton