Chris Waller and James McDonald win the Cox Plate with Via Sistina

Via Sistina was a smart mare when she was trained in Europe. She has absolutely taken off since she arrived in Australia with Chris Waller. She was the second favourite with the horse racing bookmakers for the Cox Plate and thrashed them! Eight lengths tied the largest winning margin in the history of the race and she won in a record time!

Sistina wins a Cox Plate via two trainers in England

In May 2021, Via Sistina made her race debut. She ran third in a maiden at Thirsk in Yorkshire for Joseph Tuite at odds of $41. Picked up at the Tattersalls yearling sales in December of 2019, she cost just 5,000 guineas.

Her first win came three weeks later at Goodwood. She beat a mare called Chiasma, by Galileo out of Kind, a full-sister to Frankel! Via Sistina was horribly inconsistent while with Tuite, moving to George Boughey late in her four-year-old season.

She took off at the age of five, winning the Group 1 Pretty Polly at The Curragh, beaten a nose in the Romanet in France and then runner-up again behind King Of Steel in the Champion Stakes at Ascot.

Yulong has invested wisely

2.7 million guineas was spent to pick up Via Sistina from the sales and bring her to Australia. Yulong Investments have long lived up to the second half of their name and she was one of the marquee mares sent here to race.

Her value is going to be in the paddocks after she is done on the track. Despite the prize money that she has won, her offspring will be priceless to Yulong. Not only will they keep the line going, they have the potential to be stars.

Chris Waller again shows his mastery of mares

We all know about Winx. Four wins in the Cox Plate in four consecutive years, guided masterfully by Chris Waller. The Ranvet Stakes at Randwick would be Via Sistina’s first start in Australia, beating a fellow Yulong purchase, Place Du Carrousel.

Although she was no match for Pride Of Jenni on her second start, she returned this season in flying form to prove better than ever at the age of seven. It takes a huge amount of care and knowledge to keep mares sweet as they age and Waller just has that ability to make sure they keep showing their best.

McDonald makes it a hat-trick of Cox Plate wins

Hugh Bowman won the Cox Plate four times in a row on Winx. McDonald has now won the race three years in a row but he has done it on three different horses. Anamoe for James Cummings in 2022 and Romantic Warrior in 2023 for Danny Shum were the first two in the sequence.

The only other jockey in the history of the race to achieve that same feat was Brett Thomson. Family Of Man in 1977 was followed by So Called and Dulcify for a remarkable treble of wins.

McDonald is already in rarified air with this being his 100th Group 1 win. The possibility of making four straight in 2025 will be one of the big stories to follow ahead of the Spring Carnival next season. The 32-year-old is already one of the greatest that the sport has seen. Anything more is just icing on the cake.

We are less than a quarter of the way through this season but it will be tough for any horse to dislodge Via Sistina as the Australian racehorse of the year. A third Group 1 win this season and this one by a street.