It will be for history to decide just where stunning WS Cox Plate winner Winx sits among the pantheon of stars that have won Australia’s acknowledged weight-for-age championship.
The fact that, for now, she goes into the history books as the fastest Cox Plate winner since the race was first run on Moonee Valley’s then revolutionary Strathayr turf surface in 1995 is in itself an amazing achievement.
The records will show that Winx ran 2.02.98 and won by 4.75 lengths from a high class international field, leaving noted G1 winners Criterion and Highland Reel in the minor placings. Simple facts and figures that are easily digested.
What the record books won’t tell generations to come is that Winx had the 95th running of the Cox Plate won in a twinkling approaching the home turn when she railed to the lead under a massive hold from her jockey Hugh Bowman.
Nor will it tell them that over the last 400m the race became a procession. Clearly her winning margin could easily have been much greater and her time even faster than that recorded by the wonderful champion Might And Power when he set the previous Strathayr record of 2.03.54 in 1998.
Or that she was she was running her last 400m in 23.94 seconds, four tenths quicker than the next best sectional among her rivals.
Nor will the records show that she became the first mare and first horse since Noholme in 1959 to complete the difficult Epsom Handicap-Cox Plate double in the same spring. It was a double Sunline could not achieve when she was beaten in the Epsom before winning her first Cox Plate as a 4YO in 1999.
By becoming the eighth mare to win the Cox Plate – a group that collectively have now the race 11 times – in such commanding fashion Winx will forever stand comparison to dual winner Sunline and the triple Melbourne Cup heroine Makybe Diva among the race’s modern day champions.
Of course racing historians will also argue the case for either Tranquil Star and Flight – both dual Cox Plate winners in the 1940s - as perhaps the race’s greatest female winner.
Photo by Racing and Sports
However you can be sure the Winx fan club – and after Saturday she may just be the most popular horse currently racing in Australia – will forever tell you had to witness the 2015 edition to appreciate the enormity of her performance.
Be assured that, as in all things racing, the aura of the moment will be expanded on and grow in stature as the years roll on.
In the short term the euphoria surrounding her record-breaking performance – the third G1 win of her career and her fifth Group victory in succession – will last until she starts the next phase of her career in the autumn when her obvious target will be the $4 million Queen Elizabeth Stakes – the Randwick feature that has usurped the Cox Plate as Australia’s richest wfa contest and is well on the way to upstaging the Moonee Valley event as the pinnacle championship race of the season.
Beyond that there will be the usual projections about overseas campaigns, especially as her ownership group are refreshingly more about racing than breeding.
Doors will be open to Asia, Europe – and, dare we say, even America.
Yes, America! More specifically the Breeders Cup where the Turf Mile or Filly and Mare Turf, races that have been adorned by the likes of champion European females Goldikova and Ouija Board, would present Winx with the opportunity to show the closeted world of US racing just what a top class mare from Down Under is capable of.
But that’s all conjecture for another day. For now Winx heads to the spelling paddock with her record standing at nine wins and three seconds from just 15 starts and earnings of over $3.629 million for her group of owners brought together after she was offered for sale as a yearling at the 2013 Magic Millions Gold Coast Sale.
Bred by John and Debbie Camilleri of Fairway Thoroughbreds Winx was purchased by Peter and Patty Tighe's Magic Bloodstock on the recommendation of trainer Chris Waller and his bloodstock advisor Guy Mulcaster for $230,000 from the draft of Coolmore Stud at the 2013 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale.
The Camilleri family know how to breed a decent horse. Another recent star bred and sold by the Camilleri’s was last season's champion juvenile Vancouver, also through the Gold Coast sale ring for $185,000.
The Tighes now race Winx with Richard Treweeke and Debbie Kepitis, a beneficiary of the racing empire established 50 years ago by by her father Bob Ingham and uncle Jack Ingham, aka ‘The Chicken Kings’.
The Ingham brothers raced 1995 Cox Plate winner Octagonal among their many champions. Kepitis is maintaining the family tradition as an investor in numerous horses in the Waller stable including Winx, G1 winner Amicus and prolific Group winner Catkins.
While this association has seen Kepitis enjoy many big wins, the Tighes had never raced a black performer in 20 years of racehorse ownership until Winx came along.
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A daughter of the late champion international sire Street Cry, Winx is from the stakes winning Al Akbar mare Vegas Showgirl.
Vegas Showgirl was purchased as a breeding prospect for $455,000 from New Zealand’s Dormello Stud at the 2008 Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale by Colm Santry Bloodstock on behalf of the Camilleri family.
A winner of seven races, Vegas Showgirl was a dual stakes winner and is a half-sister to the Group performer Black Magic Maggie.
