Overpass entered rare air with his second successive win in the Winterbottom Stakes at Ascot. The week’s Run The Numbers looks at the 56 horses this century who have been good enough to win the same Australian Group 1 race on multiple occasions.
Since the year 2000, there have been 1054 individual winners of the 1730 Group 1 races run in Australia, from Abbey Marie to Zoutori.
Of that group of horses, just 32.9 per cent, or 347 were able to win at the top level on multiple occasions. On Saturday, the Bjorn Baker-trained Overpass joined that select group, with his victory in the Winterbottom Stakes.
But given it was the second year in a row he has won Perth’s premier Group 1 sprint, he also belongs in an even more select category as a winner of the same race on multiple occasions.
It’s a category which, for obvious reasons, only includes horses who won Group 1s in open-age contests.
It contains 56 individual horses, or 5.3 per cent of elite winners, including pretty much every Australian star from the 21st century.
Winx is as always, the statistical dominator, having won a record six Group 1 races on multiple occasions, including four Cox Plates, four Chipping Nortons, four George Ryders, three Queen Elizabeths, three George Main Stakes and two Turnbull Stakes.
The unbeaten star Black Caviar won four individual Group 1 races multiple times, with three Lightning Stakes, and two TJ Smiths, two William Reids and two VRC Sprint Classics.
Winx wins her fourth Cox Plate.
Sunline also won four individual Group 1 races twice, two Cox Plate, two Doncasters, two All Aged Stakes and two Coolmore Classics, although only two pairs occurred this century.
Tie The Knot also won four Group 1 races on multiple occasions, although only two of those instances were in 2000 or later.
WA champ, and Sunline’s great adversary, Northerly, won three Group 1 races multiple times, with back-to-back Cox Plates and Underwood Stakes and wins in the Australian Cup in 2001 and 2003.
There are six other horses this century to have won two different Group 1 races on multiple occasions. They are Nature Strip, Buffering, Niconero, Mr Brightside, Apache Cat and Lonhro.
Horses to have won more than one Australian G1 on multiple occasions since 2000
It’s worth noting the above list doesn’t include New Zealand results. Fourteen-time elite winner Melody Belle may have won four different Group 1 races more than once, but she isn’t included in this exercise.
Speaking of Kiwi-bred mares, Verry Elleegant may be one of only nine horses to have won 11 or more Australian Group 1 wins, but she only had one duplicate victory, the Chipping Norton Stakes, which now fittingly bears her name.
Black Caviar makes it three Lightning Stakes in a row.
Similarly, Imperatriz only had one Group 1 race she won twice among her 10 Group 1 wins, six of which were in Australia. That was the William Reid Stakes.
Imperatriz and Verry Elleegant belong to that group of 45 horses since 2000 who have won just the one Australian Group 1 race on multiple occasions.
Also in that group is Makybe Diva, famous for her three Melbourne Cups, and So You Think, whose only Australian double-up came in the Cox Plate, although he did win the Tattersalls Gold Cup in Ireland twice.
More Joyous won eight Australian Group 1s, with her only dual success being the Queen Of The Turf, while Alligator Blood, who raced in the same colours and in the same stable for a fair part of his career, won seven Group 1 races, with his multiple being the Underwood Stakes.
Overpass is the most recent addition to the list, becoming the first horse to win the Winterbottom in back-to-back years since it was elevated to Group 1 status in 2011. Buffering did win the race twice, but his wins came two years apart, while Ortensia’s two victories were also separated by two years and her first was when it wasn’t a Group 1.
He is the first back-to-back Group 1 winner in a Western Australia race since Playing God won the Kingston Town Stakes in 2010 and 2011.
Mr Brightside was the most recent to go back-to-back elsewhere in Australia, when he won this year’s Makybe Diva Stakes. Last season, Imperatriz and Cascadian did it in the William Reid and the Australian Cup respectively in March, while Alligator Blood did it in the Underwood Stakes.
It may seem like it happens often, but it’s worth considering some of the horses that didn’t win Group 1 races on multiple occasions.
Anamoe won nine individual Group 1 races, but none of them were repeats, while Takeover Target also won eight different Group 1 races, six in Australia, two overseas. Weekend Hussler's seven Group 1s were all in different races, while Dundeel’s six were also separate.
