GUN RUNNER might have taken over the baton, temporarily or otherwise, from Arrogate in the US but Winx has long been going solo as by some way the best performer in Australia and probably the best active female in the world.

She made it 19 wins in a row at Randwick at the weekend in the Group 2 Chelmsford Stakes, but not without a scare along the way again, for it was only inside the final 50 metres that she ran down the long-time leader Red Excitement to win by a length.

Red Excitement is not out of the top drawer, and Winx had beaten him by a bit further here on her previous run despite blowing the start. But sectionals, which are a staple of Australian analysis, show that Red Excitement ran highly efficiently in opening a lead of several lengths this time and must have been difficult to catch.

TURBO-CHARGED

Winx managed to do just that by putting in one of her turbo-charged finishes – 33.1s for the last 600 metres – while nothing else got close. Never mind that Winx probably ran to only an approximate timefigure of 116 on overall time here, for those sectionals had her nudging closer to the 130 mark.

Even Winx may get beat if she keeps leaving things to chance quite like this, but for the time being she is providing top entertainment by her late-in-the-day racing style.

No small amount of scepticism has been expressed closer to home about just what she is beating “in her own backyard”.

But her thrashing of Hartnell – a much better horse now than he was in Europe – in last year’s Cox Plate and this year’s Queen Elizabeth Stakes could have been achieved only by a top-notcher.

Several horses have won the Cox Plate twice – including Phar Lap in the 1930s and So You Think much more recently – but only the legendary Kingston Town has won it three times. All being well, Winx will be going for the hat-trick on October 28th.