At Randwick, a mare named Winx shoots for her 20th straight win. That’s right, 20 in a row. She’s raced and beaten the best around, handled wet or dry tracks, raced on right-handed and left-handed tracks and over sprint and middle distances.

Nothing stops her. Still she wins. Still the legend grows, a legend that has spread beyond racing circles. Just as Black Caviar did just over four years ago, Winx transcends her sport. People, many with little or no knowledge of racing, will flock to Randwick today to get a glimpse of history in the making.

For it is only Black Caviar, with 25 successive wins, who has a greater winning streak than that of Winx.

When she notched 19 wins straight, Winx joined champions of a bygone era Desert Gold and Gloaming. And, remarkably, the similarities don’t end there.

After his father died, in 1880, 15-year-old Tom Lowry inherited a 8100ha property called Okawa in the Hawke’s Bay region of New Zealand.

It was a sheep and cattle farm but as Tom matured, a passion for the thoroughbred grew.

He also proved a dab hand at cricket and carved out a cricket ground on his property called the Grove, which is still played on today.

Around the turn of the century, Lowry developed Okawa as a thoroughbred breeding venture, striving for the special racehorse. He bred a neat, compact filly by the sire All Black out of the mare Aurarius in September 1912. Her bloodlines traced back to the immortal Carbine. Lowry called her Desert Gold.

Reports of the time said the filly was a bit of a character — she would lash out with her hind legs and grind her teeth at strangers in a mock biting motion. But at the racetrack the idiosyncrasies vanished. There was simply a will to win.

Desert Gold began her 19-race winning streak as a two-year-old, was unbeaten in 14 races as a three-year-old and seemed invincible as a four-year-old until ... defeat in a race called the North Island Challenge Stakes. She was beaten by a precocious youngster who carried 17kg less than her, a weight difference unheard of today.

She retired in 1919, having inspired a nation through the horrors of the Great War, winning major races across New Zealand and Australia, and spent her last days frolicking around Okawa.

Lowry married Helen Watt, daughter of New Zealand shipping tycoon James Watt, and they had five children.

Their son Tom, who inherited Okawa and was New Zealand’s first ever Test cricket captain, continued the thoroughbred interests when Lowry Sr died in 1944.

Okawa is still in the Lowry name, with the fifth-generation Tom running the farm.

In September 1915, breeder Ernest Clarke welcomed a strong colt by his imported stallion The Welkin at his Melton Stud in Victoria.

Clarke, the brother of prominent Victorian racing identity Sir Rupert Clarke, had developed Melton in an effort to breed a champion.

The colt was plain-looking but he stood over a lot of ground. When tried on the racetrack, he showed he had an enormous stride.

Clarke held yearling sales every year and, despite the colt’s physical attributes, he decided to put him up for sale.

The colt, who became known as Gloaming, was recovering from strangles and didn’t attract the level of interest his breeder had hoped. He was sold for just 230 guineas to an agent for New Zealand owner George D. Greenwood, who shipped the colt to his property Teviotdale in the Canterbury region.

Greenwood was a businessman with significant property interests but his passion was the thoroughbred.

Gloaming started his career in Australia, winning the Chelmsford Stakes at Randwick on debut in 1918. Curiously, almost a century later, Winx won the Chelmsford Stakes to equal Gloaming’s 19-race win streak.

In the ensuing years, Gloaming was almost unstoppable, until 1921 when he contested a 1600m race at New Zealand’s Ellerslie track.

A horse called Thespian ran an Australasian record time to bring Gloaming’s sequence to an end. Remarkably, this shock defeat broke what could have been a 29-race winning streak as Gloaming soon restored normality with win after win.

In 1919, Gloaming and Desert Gold finally clashed, the former an up-and-coming three-year-old, the latter a six-year-old. Gloaming won two of the three encounters.

He raced 67 times, had 15 trips on steamships across the Tasman Sea and won 57 times.

Winx was born on September 14, 2011, a daughter of Street Cry and breeder John Camilleri’s mare Vegas Showgirl. Camilleri sold the filly to Peter Tighe, Debbie Kepitis and Richard Treweeke.

So far, she has had 29 starts for 23 wins and three seconds, a record not dissimilar to the superstars of a century ago.

Crowds flocked to see Desert Gold and Gloaming race. They didn’t worry about having a bet, many didn’t have the money anyway. They went for the joy, the pleasure, the sheer delight of watching a thoroughbred in full flight, and they will do the same today, just to say they were there the day Winx won her 20th straight race. Go Winx!