Waverley Star
New Zealand-bred Thoroughbred racehorse
Waverley Star (foaled 1982) was a New Zealand Thoroughbred racehorse who is best remembered for finishing second to Bonecrusher in the 1986 Cox Plate – widely referred to as the 'race of the century'. Waverley Star, who was known as Our Waverley Star in Australia to distinguish him from a 1976 foaling of the same name, won his maiden race as a three-year-old on 30 November 1985 at Pukekohe. Prior to his first visit to Australia, for the Cox Plate, he had 13 starts for 10 wins and 2 placings in New Zealand. This included:
2nd in the Castlemaine XXXX Easter Stakes (Group One 1600m) behind Cosmetique, with Infinite Secret third.
1st in the Television New Zealand Stakes (Group Two 2000m WFA) beating Solveig and Santanea
1st in the Admiralty Handicap (1200m) at Ellerslie on 23 August 1986 when he beat Matthew Ryan with Bonecrusher third.
In the Cox Plate, he was installed 3/1 second-favourite behind fellow New Zealander Bonecrusher, who was 6/4-on. With 800 metres to run in the Cox Plate, Lance O'Sullivan took Waverley Star to the lead, with Gary Stewart on Bonecrusher right behind him. The two horses then raced well clear of the field, with little between them for the remainder of the race, and at the post, Bonecrusher was narrowly in front. The Filbert placed third to make a New Zealand trifecta.
He won one of the lead-ups to the 1986 Japan Cup, in which he finished fifth behind Jupiter Island (GB), Allez Milord (USA) and two Japanese horses.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Waverley Star” is new Zealand-bred Thoroughbred racehorse. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Waverley, Star and Zealand-bred, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Waverley Star” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.