The superlatives for Via Sistina’s eight-length romp in Saturday’s Group 1 W S Cox Plate (2040m) came in thick and fast, only exacerbated when noting she broke Winx’s track record by nearly two seconds, and the rating backs up most of the applause.
Via Sistina has run to a Racing & Sports rating of 132, which is the fourth-highest Cox Plate rating recorded and just two pounds off the best, with data going back to 1980.
Racing & Sports head of handicapping Adam Blencowe, the man charged with assigning Via Sistina 132, says the rating is undeniably high, but must be taken in context.
“What we might call outlier results such as this one stress the importance of having a ratings model underpinned by a strong statistical process. Those processes can’t simply by picking a horse that has ‘run to form’, and in fact not one horse in the 2024 Cox Plate produced their pre-race mark,” Blencowe said.
“The Timeform method, which not only rates races on horses but horses on races, is long established and here points to a rating between 131 and 134. That, along with the time, results in a rating of 132.”
Only two horses have recorded a higher rating in the Cox Plate, and they hold seven plates between them – Winx and Kingston Town.
Winx ran to 134 in her second Cox Plate, interestingly when also an eight-length winner in 2016 while she also ran to 133 in her first of four wins when thumping the 127 rated Criterion and subsequently 129 rated Highland Reel.
“Winx is an obvious point of comparison – from the same yard and famous for her Cox Plate routes. Winx was rated 133 and 134 by Racing and Sports in her first two Cox Plates, before running 127-129 in the two that followed. So, Via splits the difference. She is living in Winx’s world, though that is tempered somewhat by the fact that Winx produced form at or above this level seven times,” Blencowe said.
Kingston Town, who won three Cox Plates from 1980-1982, ran to a rating of 133 on the Racing & Sports scale in his first win when he scored by five lengths. His other two wins rated 128 and 129.
To be within 1-2 pounds of Winx and Kingston Town is incredible, but perhaps just as incredible is the list of Cox Plate winers she’s outrated.
Only Winx, Kingston Town and now Via Sistina have broken 130 in a Cox Plate with six horses having run to a Racing & Sports rating of 129 – Might And Power, So You Think, Strawberry Road, Sunline and Northerly.
Via Sistina’s win, albeit somewhat in isolation, given her previous peak rating was 124, achieved the start prior in the Group 1 Turnbull Stakes (2000m), is backed up by a scintillating time figure.
The time of 2.01.07 is approximately 11 lengths faster than Winx’s track record, which Blencowe says is “unescapably fast”, especially considering the rest of the card “points to good conditions for running fast times, but not in the extreme.”
“The time is a large part of the assessment. It is true that track records – and times in general – are, in large part, the product of the conditions under which they are run. But this was inescapably fast. The margin between Via Sistina is as good a clue as any. That a set of quality horses from around the globe were unable to run within eight lengths of the time tells us that running so fast was far from easy,” Blencowe said.
Often in racing people can overreact to a performance before having every bit of information, but by all measurable factors, Via Sistina has produced one of the best performances ever seen on an Australian racetrack, and put herself amongst an elite class of thoroughbred.