Black Knight (27 August 1979–2002) was an Australian

Thoroughbred The Thoroughbred is a horse breed best known for its use in horse racing. Although the word ''thoroughbred'' is sometimes used to refer to any breed of purebred horse, it technically refers only to the Thoroughbred breed. Thoroughbreds are ...

racehorse. He was best known for winning the

Melbourne Cup The Melbourne Cup is a Thoroughbred horse race held in Melbourne, Australia. It is a 3200-metre race for three-year-olds and over, conducted by the Victoria Racing Club on the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Victoria as part of the Melb ...

at Flemington Racecourse in November 1984.

Background

Black Knight was a dark bay horse bred in

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

by his owner Robert Holmes à Court, a South-African born businessman described during the 1980s as Australia's richest man. He was sired by Silver Knight, a New Zealand-bred stallion who won the Melbourne Cup in 1971. The horse was sent into training with the veteran George Hanlon at his training base at

Leopold, Victoria Leopold is a residential eastern suburb of Geelong and is a gateway to the Bellarine Peninsula. At the 2016 census, Leopold had a population of 12,814. History The area was formerly known as Kensington, but was renamed in 1892 after Prince Leop ...

. Black Knight was

gelded A gelding is a castrated male horse or other equine, such as a pony, donkey or a mule. Castration, as well as the elimination of hormonally driven behavior associated with a stallion, allows a male equine to be calmer and better-behaved, makin ...

early in his life and usually raced in blinkers.

Racing career

Black Knight established himself as a contender for the 1984 Melbourne Cup when finishing placed behind Chagemar in the

Geelong Cup The Geelong Cup is a Geelong Racing Club Group 3 Thoroughbred horse race, held under handicap conditions over a distance of 2400 metres at the Geelong Racecourse, Geelong, Victoria, Australia on a Wednesday in late October. The prize money for ...

and The Dalgety. In the build-up to the race, the gelding was the subject of a major gamble, being backed down from odds of 50/1 to 11/1 shortly before the event. Despite the support of betters, Black Knight's regular jockey Robert Heffernan rejected him, preferring to ride Martian's Son. The Sydney-based jockey

Peter Cook Peter Edward Cook (17 November 1937 – 9 January 1995) was an English actor, comedian, satirist, playwright and screenwriter. He was the leading figure of the British satire boom of the 1960s, and he was associated with the anti-establishme ...

, who had only ever seen the horse on television, was booked to take the ride on four days before the race. In the Cup, Black Knight carried 50 kg started at odds of 10/1 in a field of nineteen runners. Cook sent him into the lead 250

metres The metre (British spelling Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most notable va ...

from the finish and he stayed on to win by two and a half

lengths Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Intern ...

from Chagemar. His success gave Hanlon his third success in the race following

Piping Lane Piping Lane (foaled 1966, died 1996) was a brown Australian Thoroughbred racehorse gelding by Lanesborough out of the mare Londonderry Air by Piping Time. Piping Lane came to prominence by winning the 1972 Melbourne Cup over 3,200 metres at odd ...

in 1972 and Arwon in 1978.

Retirement

After his retirement from racing, Black Knight was retrained as a

police horse Mounted police are police who patrol on horseback or camelback. Their day-to-day function is typically picturesque or ceremonial, but they are also employed in crowd control because of their mobile mass and height advantage and increasingly in th ...

, and served for several years with the Victoria Police. He was retired from duty in 1995, although he regularly took part in parades of past winners before the running of the Melbourne Cup. In July 2002 he contracted a bacterial infection which led to kidney failure. He was euthanised and buried on the farm where he had spent his retirement.

Pedigree

References

{{reflist 1979 racehorse births 2002 racehorse deaths Melbourne Cup winners Racehorses bred in Australia Racehorses trained in Australia Thoroughbred family 13-e