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Winx, the star mare who dominated Australian racing in 2016, is set to make her first public appearance of 2017 ahead of her return to competitive racing.
Winx will run out in a barrier trial at Rosehill Gardens on Tuesday, January 16, as her trainer Chris Waller gears up the mare’s preparation for her Group 2 run in the Star Apollo Stakes, which will take place on February 11 at Royal Randwick.
Arguably the finest mare in word racing, Winx has never won a barrier trial in her career, never finishing better than third place in 12 different trials.
However, the star mare’s competitive record is something else entirely.
Winx currently sits on a 13-race winning streak, the last of which came at the 2016 Cox Plate, when the mare defended her 2015 title by blowing away the rest of the field, including the highly-touted Godolphin horse, Hartnell.
In her 23-race career to date, Winx has racked up 17 victories and three second-placed finishes.
Winx hasn’t raced since the Cox Plate, after which she pulled up with an abrasion to her hind leg. Rather than let it heal naturally, trainer Waller instead decided on a different approach.
“Simple bathing and a trip or two to the beach would see it naturally heal; however I have taken the aggressive approach of treating it with antibiotics to ensure no risks are taken,” he said at the time.
While it is not known exactly what 2017 holds for Winx, she is set to contest the $4 million Queen Elizabeth Stakes in April.
Beyond that, however, it is not yet known whether Australia’s star mare will be heading overseas or staying down under in the hope of gaining a third-straight Cox Plate, however Waller has said competing overseas is an option, albeit an unlikely one.
“It would be great to go with her to Hong Kong, it would great to go to Dubai, it would be great to go to Japan, it would be great to go to England and France but you can’t go everywhere and that decision is made a lot easier when you have so many great races in Australia,” Waller said last November.
“I guess you could say the Australian racing calendar is doing a good job looking after its own because we’ve got enough good racing that we’ve got nothing left at the end of a long Spring Carnival.”
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