Mighty Mare WINX

Sharon Lee Chapman -Fasttrack Photography

Autumn/Winter 2019 Issue #33 $11.95

A FAREWELL TO MIGHTY MARE WINX

WINX - A GREAT

When Mighty Mare Winx ran and won her last race, she froze in time special memories for everyone she had touched or seen her. We all knew we were witness to a unique sporting achievement.

An era ended amid much fanfare when Winx raced in the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth

Stakes (2000m) at Randwick in Sydney on April 13, her partner-in-winning, jockey Hugh Bowman, saying the champion bowed out at the top of her game.

Winx won 37 of her 43 races, including 25 at Group 1 level and concluding with 33 wins in a row. She won four Cox Plates (2015-18), surpassing the great Kingston Town’s three (1980-82).

She was rated the best turf horse in the world, and regarded by many as the best horse of the past few seasons. Opinions on the latter assessment vary, depending mainly on which side of the equator you live, but it is fact that an American online poll of world racing last year ranked her No. 1 in the popularity parade.

She didn’t race outside Australia’s eastern states, but beat the few overseas raiders, including multiple Group 1 winners Godolphin’s Benbatl and Coolmore’s Highland Reel, who came from the northern hemisphere for the Cox Plate.

After good form at two and three, Winx was unbeatable at four, five, six and seven and lifted her standing above the champions of this century: dual Cox Plate winner Sunline (1999 and 2000 before finishing second and fourth behind another champion, Northerly, in the next two years); triple Melbourne Cup winner Makybe Diva (2003-05), who also won a Cox Plate (2005); and unbeaten sprinter Black Caviar, who travelled overseas in 2012 to win the Group 1 Diamond Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot, the 22nd of her 25 races.

Inevitably, came comparisons with the legend of the previous century Phar Lap, the sporting hero who, from 1929-32 during the world’s Great Depression, gave the people of Australia something to throw their hats into the air for.

That emotionally economic fact—apart from the near impossibility of comparing horses from different and much-changed eras—probably means Phar Lap will remain No. 1 forever.

6 AUTUMN/WINTER 2019 #33

LADY of RACING

Ladies in RACING Magazine is fortunate to have very talented contributors that have documented Winx’s stellar career. In the following pages, Stephen Howell, Editor of Inside Racing Magazine compiled a tribute to Winx’s story.

Winx winning Cox Plate win No. 4.

Story By Stephen Howell Photo Brett Holburt/Racing Photos

AUTUMN/WINTER 2019 #337