On Track - Spring 2019

6 For the past four years the legend that is Winx has dominated the W.S. Cox Plate. In 2015 she slammed her rivals by five lengths when she came home in race record time, seeing off that very useful older horse Criterion and the globetrotting Irish star Highland Reel, who was to frank the form several times over the next few years in Ireland, England and Hong Kong. A year later she was taken on by Godolphin’s best older horse, Hartnell, who had proved himself by far the best of the rest in this country. But he was no match for the magnificent mare, going down by a record margin of eight lengths with the three-year- old filly Yankee Rose flying late for third. The hat-trick came up in 2017 when she had to battle a lot harder but got the job done by beating Humidor, while she raced into immortality as the first horse ever to win four Cox Plates last season when she saw off the well credentialled European invader Benbatl. But now she’s gone - and the debate about who will assume her mantle is heating up. One thing Winx’s absence has done is open up the race, making it more competitive and more attractive for foreign challengers who know they will no longer have to try to beat one of the greatest gallopers ever to have graced the turf. On the home front the horse with arguably the best credentials to take her title is the Tasmanian trained Mystic Journey, who stamped herself as a filly of the highest class at the end of her three-year-old campaign. In short order she came to the mainland and landed the Australian Guineas at Flemington, beating not just fillies but colts and geldings, and then returned to headquarters to beat the likes of Hartnell (still a wonderful yardstick) and top four-year-old mare Alizee, in the inaugural running of the All-Star Mile. Like Winx in 2015, she will be four years old when she steps out at The Valley on the last Saturday in October. Like Winx (who had put together a winning streak of four coming into her first W.S. Cox Plate) Mystic Journey has proved a serial winner: her seasonal reappearance in the PB Lawrence Stakes at Caulfield was her seventh in succession. DAWN OF A NEW ERA By Mick Lynch, The Age Chief Racing Reporter