Winx, Beauty Generation, City of Light atop World's Best Racehorse April rankings

Australian superstar Winx, Hong Kong-based Beauty Generation, and the retired American horse City of Light continue to share the top rating on the latest edition of the Longines World’s Best Racehorse Rankings.

All three horses are rated 125 in the April edition of the rankings issued by a ratings panel operating under the auspices of the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities. City of Light’s rating is fixed, owing to his retirement to stud, but Beauty Generation is an active horse in Hong Kong while Winx nears the end of a legendary career. Both those horses bypassed a trip to Dubai last week, where they would have faced the emerging Japanese star, Almond Eye, in the $6 million Dubai Turf. Almond Eye was rated at 119 after her eye-catching win.

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It was another Dubai performer, Old Persian, who rose sharply in the latest rankings, his rating now at 122 after a dazzling victory over Cheval Grand in the $6 million Sheema Classic on March 30. Thunder Snow was rated 121 after capturing the $12 million World Cup by a nose over Gronkowski (120).

Happy Clapper, a regular victim of Winx in Australia, is rated 123, a proliferation of what some analysts regarded as a flaw in the WBRR system during 2018. Last year, Winx’s elite-level mark dragged an inordinate number of Australian-based horses into the international top 100, and Happy Clapper, on his own merits, is a dubious member of the world’s top five-rated horses.