1984 New Zealand Derby - Addington, Christchurch: Naval Officer

Run on Easter Cup Day, only five horses completed the contest after a major smash destroyed the chances of all of the favoured runners. One of the less fancied starters, Naval Officer, was too strong for the other four in the sprint to the line.

[@DavidTangye]

Nice to finally see this after so many years. Liquid Lightning (Andy) was owned by my father. He told me when I when to stay a few weeks later what happened. So for the record: he said Andy jumped the shadow that was coming off a light post (or the finish post) in the afternoon sun. He was sure Andy would have recovered as he was 'good on his feet', but as he slowed suddenly, the horse behind barrelled into the back of his sulky and knocked him forward into a nosedive. It's hard to see this in the race video due to change of camera at the critical point, but the replay helps see it. Anyway, he said Charlie Hunter, who was driving the horse behind, did apologise to Richard Brosnan (or Dad, I can't remember which) for not looking where they were going. I assume Charlie was glancing to see who was outside him at the critical moment. It would have only been a one second glance at an unfortunate time, but it gave him no time left to pull his horse to the outside of Andy. Even had he been watching Andy jump, it was debatable that he could have avoided running into the sulky anyway. As I understand it, they were not interested in speculating what might have or might have not resulted had Andy's sulky not been impacted. Dad certainly felt terrible about the accident, especially that the top horses never got their one chance at winning the Derby. Months later, when Andy raced at Addington the next time, he did the same jump as he crossed the finish line. I saw that video ages ago, and remember the crowd's audible gasp as he did it, but he did not fall (I think he recovered gait quite quickly. I also think he won that race.) Soon after, they shifted the source of the shadow (moved the finish post back from the track?), so that shadow would no longer be there.

[@iangrant1932]

Thank you for your comments on this, I thought it might create some interest. Sorry Lewis, I don't have Christian Cullen's NZ Cup win. Haven't uploaded anything for a while because of other things going on but I still have a lot of old tapes to go through, so the project isn't finished yet. Cheers, Ian.

[@tylermcintyre1454]

Tyler Mac here we come

[@jarnee1]

Hey Ian thanks for your uploads, I've lost count how many times I have viewed them, would you have Christian Cullen''s NZ cup win, I would love to see it in its entirety.

[@tylermcintyre1454]

Tyler Mac here come

[@malcolm4672]

do you have the 1984 NZ cup, where George Shand knocked out half the field with the worst drive I have ever seen.

[@bobb5758]

what a joke.....the horse that fell first was out of its gear before it actually fell, and to think a driver had to hold a driverless horse for so far into the race, and the race continued ?? I wonder if was not the Derby if it would have been called off.

[@filippocanaliderossi8721]

ruthless race

[@kingwah9009]

Bobby

[@cirogiannini6690]

Mai visto !come si fa a non sospendere la corsa con un incidente simile.

[@raymondcancel7011]

Oh look we can bet these horses watch them die too, oh this is fun!

[@brendonoconnor4484]

Very funny, no horses died.

[@tonylove4800]

Sorry, what do you mean? Your English is hard to understand.

[@fabriziovescovi7464]

Terrible!