UNIQUE FEAT

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 974, 17 May 1930, Page 12

UNIQUE FEAT

WON SAME DERBY TWICE VICTORIES OF FIREWORKS As all racing folk know, a Derby is a race for three-year-olds, consequently it is impossible for one horse to win the same Derby twice, says an Australian sporting writer. When you get talking horse sometimes, however, you often run up against people whose memory for turf peculiarities is remarkable, and we were all well taken down in a little, argument the other day, for the impossible has happened in the past, and the sapie horse has won the same Derby twice. It took the book to convince me that such was the case, yet there it is in black and white. In the Victoria Derby of 1867 there were five starters, and the race was won by Mr. J. Tait’s Fireworks, by Kelpie, in 2.56, jockey C. Stanley. In the Victoria Derby of 1868 there were again five starters, and again Fireworks won. this time in three seconds faster time, and ridden by the same jockey. The explanation lies in the fact that the Derbies were run in the same sea-son—lS6B-69—the second one being run on New Year’s Day, or only a couple of months after the first one. The second race, it appears, according to the enthusiast who took us all down in the argument, was staged especially for the Duke of Edinburgh, who was visiting Melbourne on that occasion. There was the ordinary Derby again in the spring of 1869.