Dave O’Sullivan, a legend of NZ horse racing, dies aged 90

Dave O'Sullivan (right) and his son Lance.

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 11 New Zealand training premierships, 10 in partnership with his son Paul. Another son Lance is one of New Zealand’s best-ever 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 Zealand-trained horse on the world stage.

Dave and Paul trained Horlicks to win the 1989 Japan Cup in world-record time back when that race was one of the strongest and most sought-after 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.

His first really good horse was Oopik, who won the 1976 Sydney Cup, but a string of greats followed including one of New Zealand’s most iconic sprinters in Mr Tiz, the only horse to win the Railway three times.

Like so many other O’Sullivan stars, he beat Australia’s best on their home turf in the 1991 Galaxy in Sydney.

“Dad, and then Dad and Paul, had so many great horses. I remember being in the stables one day and we had a whole row of boxes full of Group winners, like 12 of them in a row,” says Lance O’Sullivan.

Paul says much of that success was built off his father’s eye for a horse.

“We took My Blue Denim to the Melbourne Cup and gave her her final track work gallop on the Saturday before as planned,” remembers Paul, who went on to a great training career in Hong Kong.

“Dad had a good look at her as she was coming back in and said she needed more so we gave her another gallop the next morning, which you’d never do.

“She came out, ran second in the Cup two days later and it wasn’t something I wouldn’t have done but Dad’s eye was right.”

Off the track, O’Sullivan was the embodiment of his training philosophy, impeccably dressed, well-mannered, cheerful and thoughtful. Little things were done well to achieve the best results for man and horse.

“He was a very deep thinker, very considered in how he did things and how he trained,” says Lance.

O’Sullivan trained more than 1900 winners between New Zealand, Australia and that famous single victory in Japan.

Made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1992, Dave O’Sullivan and his late wife Marie, who died in 2015, had five children. Daughter Lisa died after a long illness in 2014.

Dave O’Sullivan is survived by Lance, Paul, Mark and Debbie and 11 grandchildren.

His funeral will be held at the Church of the Holy Angels in Matamata at 11.30am on Thursday, with a gathering soon after, most fittingly, at the Matamata racetrack.