WINX is the current superstar of Australian racing and she won her second Group 1 Cox Plate last weekend, bringing her recent winning streak to 13 victories. She is edging closer to the Aus$10 million mark in prizemoney but a plan to line out again next weekend in the Group 1 Emirates Stakes has now been shelved, and we will see her again in 2017.

The five-year-old daughter of Street Cry is head and shoulders ahead of any other racehorse in her family going back generations. In fact the only other runners of significant merit in the family are her half-brother El Divino and their dam Vegas Showgirl.

Winner of 16 of her 22 races to date and runner-up on three occasions, Winx has landed historic back-to-back wins in the Cox Plate, as well as Group 1 wins in the Queensland Oaks at three, the Doncaster Mile, George Ryder Stakes, 150th Epsom and Chipping Norton Stakes at four, while this year adding three Group 1s including the Caulfield Stakes.

Winx is the second foal of Vegas Showgirl, a New Zealand-bred daughter of Al Akbar, and the first of her offspring to race. The second runner is the Snitzel three-year-old colt El Divino and he won twice as a juvenile, one of these victories coming when he dead-heated in the Group 3 Widden Kindergarten Stakes.

El Divino is trained by Gai Waterhouse and at this year’s Inglis Easter Sale she paid Aus$2.3 million for his own-brother.

There is another Snitzel offspring of Vegas Showgirl on the ground this season. All of these are worth well in excess of the Aus$230,000 that Winx cost as a yearling at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Sale back in 2013. She has repaid that investment 40 times over.

Winx was bred by Fairway Thoroughbreds’ John Camilleri. Her dam Vegas Showgirl won seven races in New Zealand and Australia and was twice a stakes winner in the country of her birth. She was also group-placed there in the Group 3 Stoney Bridge Stakes.

Vegas Showgirl is one of five winners from the unraced Vegas Magic (by Voodoo Rhythm) and the best of the rest was the Westminster filly Black Magic Maggie who was a multiple winner in New Zealand and runner-up in the Group 3 Optimum Stakes.

The multiple Grade 1 winner Street Cry, by Machiavellian, needs no introduction and Winx is not the only outstanding female runner he has sired. His daughter Zenyatta had an almost perfect racing career, was accorded Horse of the Year status and won more than $7.3 million. Street Cry is also sire of the Australian champion and Melbourne Cup winner Shocking and the Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense.