Tidal Light named Horse of Year

Press, 22 September 1987, Page 41

Tidal Light named Horse of Year

PA Wellington Last season’s champion three-year-old, Tidal Light, was named Horse of the Year at an awards ceremony in Palmerston North last Friday. A poll of racing journalists throughout the country favoured the filly over the previous year’s winner, Bonecrusher, by just two votes, 36-34. The Adelaide and Caulfield cup winner, Lomondy, got two votes. Tidal Light, which left yesterday for a Melbourne spring campaign,

won 10 of her 13 starts during the season. The daughter of Diagramatic scored group 1 victories in the New Zealand Derby (2400 m Air New Zealand Stakes (2000 m and Canterbury (NSW) Guineas (2000 m She stamped her superiority over her contemporaries in the Waikato and Avondale Guineas, and proved herself a class above aged opposition in the Air NZ and Dulcie Stakes. She was a luckless second in the 1000 Guineas and a gallant third in a comeback ran in the group 1 Lion Brown Sprint (1400 m Her pending campaign is aimed primarily at the W. S. Cox Plate, the race in which Bonecrusher beat Waverley Star in a magnificent showdown last year.

Bonecrusher’s claims for £ second successive

Horse of the Year title were backed up by his two group 1 wins before the Cox Plate and subsequent triumph, after a severe viral attack in Japan, over the Melbourne Cup winner, At Talaq, in the VRC Australian Cup. However, he failed to come back in Sydney in his autumn campaign. Bonecrusher, spelled for a lengthy period on his return from Sydney, lacerated his off-front leg in a paddock accident last week to further frustrate his trainer Frank Ritchie. The injuries, although minor, will put his training back a further fortnight The gelding, m extra good health otherwise, damaged the tendon in his near-side foreleg last month and was eased out of a build-up aimed at having him at his peak later this