MELBOURNE, Australia -- The New Zealand super mare, Sunline, smashed the hearts of her 12 rivals and then a bunch of Southern Hemisphere racing records here on Saturday when she won the BMW Cox Plate for the second consecutive year. The seventh leg in the Emirates World Championship racing series.

The 5-year-old mare by Desert Sun out of the Western Symphony mare Songline, trained and part owned by Trevor McKee and ridden by a confident Greg Childs had drawn the outside 13 barrier position for the 2,040 meters Group I BMW Cox Plate, regarded as the Australasian middle distance championship. With a purse of two-million Australian dollars ($1-million U.S.) the race featured the top four finishers from the 1999 Plate.

All week leading up to the race the talk had been that Sunline would be under constant pressure and would crack at the 200-meter mark but that strategy never came into play.

Five wide going into the first turn on a course listed as soft the 6/4 race favorite settled nicely up near the front of the early pacemakers. At the 1,000 meter mark, Childs, shook the reins, Sunline accelerated and the race was over. A crowd of 34,070 cheered wildly at her dominating performance.

Seven lengths clear at the finish she equaled the record winning margin set by Dulcify in 1979. The victory was the 21st in her 29 race career with five seconds. Her career earnings now go over the $6-million (AUS) total making her the first horse in Australian history to pass that mark. She became the first horse to successfully defend the Cox Plate title since Kingston Town in 1982. Among back-to-back winners of the race her name now joins that of the Australian legend Phar Lap (1930-1931).

Sunline earned 12 points for her victory and becomes the seventh different winner in the 11-race, nine nation, four continent Emirates World Series Racing Championship. The series comes back to North America for next Saturday's Breeders' Cup Turf and Breeders' Cup Classic. Then it's on to Tokyo on November 26th for the Japan Cup and the series ends on December 17th in Hong Kong for the Hong Kong Cup. Waiting for the series points champion is a $1-million dollar (U.S.) bonus.

Sunline, the only repeat winner in the two-year old Emirates World Series and the only mare to win one of the event's races, is planning on making her run at the title in Hong Kong. But after Saturday's memorable victory here in the Cox Plate there's little doubt that Sunline, right now, is the best mare racing on turf in the world.

Cox Plate Order of Finish 1- Sunline 2- Diatribe 3- Referral 4- Oliver Twist 5- Skoozi Please 6- Testa Rossa 7- The Message 8- Fubu 9- Tie The Knot 10- Show A Heart 11- Shogun Lodge 12- Sky Heights 13- Beat The Fade

Time (2040 meters) -- 2:07.70 Course Listing -- Slow