I AM getting used to early-morning alarm calls on Saturdays thanks to the exploits of the remarkable mare Winx in Australia. She was in action again last week in the Group 1 Colgate Optic White Stakes at Royal Randwick and made the get-up-early effort worth it with her 20th win in a row.

It was not without a scare along the way, which is becoming her thing almost as much as winning, and she looked right up against it 500 metres out when under the pump and still with only one rival behind her. But she quickened like the star she is – putting in a sub 11.0s penultimate 200m – to score a shade cosily in the end.

A defeat of Happy Clapper by a length and a quarter is still about 10lb below Winx’s best, which was last seen a few starts ago now. But you cannot doubt her attitude when the chips are down nor the entertainment she is providing for racing fans in all time zones and stages of sleep deprivation.

That said, hers was not the best effort Down Under on the day, with Humidor most impressive in slamming Hartnell and Black Heart Bart in the Group 1 Makybe Diva Stakes at Flemington an hour later. Timeform has that a 126 form effort compared to Winx’s 123, with the two horses’ last 600m times 34.43s and 33.54s respectively.

Whatever horses the Europeans send for the Breeders’ Cup Mile are going to face a significant local rival in the shape of World Approval, who won the Grade 1 Woodbine Mile last Saturday evening in some style.

The gelding’s two-and-a-half length defeat of Lancaster Bomber reads even better when one considers he had to give weight all round in a field that also included Mondialiste, Arod, Dutch Connection and a disappointing Deauville. The TimeformUS figure for World Approval is equivalent to about 119.

There was a somewhat unexpected win for the British raider Capla Temptress in the Grade 1 Natalma Stakes on the same course the next day, though this was the slowest of a trio of mile races on turf and weak for a Grade 1, with the winner’s timefigure 100 at most.