Racing legend dies
Matamata training genius died peacefully late last week
Dave O’Sullivan, one of the legends of New Zealand horse racing who beat the best in the world, has died. The Matamata training genius died peacefully late on Friday morning. He was 90.
O’Sullivan won 12 New Zealand training premierships, 11 in partnership with his son Paul. Another son Lance is one of New Zealand’s bestever jockeys.
But for all of his Hall of Fame feats at home and in Australia, it was in
Japan that Dave O’Sullivan recorded his greatest win and arguably the biggest ever by a New Zealandtrained horse on the world stage.
Dave and Paul trained Horlicks to win the 1989 Japan Cup in worldrecord time back when that race was one of the strongest and most soughtafter in world racing. Lance rode the champion mare.
“I think that was Dad’s greatest moment and for Paul and I too,” Lance O’Sullivan told the Herald.
“To go to Japan and overcome all those challenges and beat world-class horses in a world-record time, that is pretty hard to top.”
Lance says one of his father’s most famous defeats led to another of his most satisfying victories.
The O’Sullivans trained Our Waverley Star who finished second to Bonecrusher in the spine-tingling 1986 Cox Plate, dubbed by many as Australasia’s race of the century.
“Dad was proud of being part of that race and what it meant to so many people and it also made him even prouder when we went back there to win it [the Cox Plate] with Surfers Paradise in 1991.”
O’Sullivan was a handy jockey before he started training in 1961, setting up Wexford Stables from where Lance and Andrew Scott train with enormous success today.