SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian champion mare Winx won the George Ryder Stakes for the third successive year on Saturday to register her 24th-straight victory and become the most successful flat racer in Group One races.
Ridden by jockey Hugh Bowman, Winx broke clear of the field with 150 of the 1,500 metres remaining in the A$1 million ($769,600) race at Rosehill Gardens Racecourse in western Sydney and romped to her 17th Group One triumph.
That put her ahead of American thoroughbred John Henry, which won 16 Group One races in the 1980s, and just five short of Irish hurdler Hurricane Fly, the now retired gelding which won 22 Group One races earlier this century.
Winx's 24th win in a row also puts her one behind Black Caviar in the Australian record books, the popular mare having won 25 successive races, including 15 Group Ones, from 2008 until her retirement in 2013.
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Peter Rutherford)
