Comedy King (1907–1929) was a British bred thoroughbred racehorse that raced his entire career in Australia. He is most notable for winning the 1910

Melbourne Cup The Melbourne Cup is an annual Group 1 Thoroughbred horse race held in Melbourne, Australia, at the Flemington Racecourse. It is a 3200-metre race for three-year-olds and older, conducted by the Victoria Racing Club that forms part of the ...

and becoming the first Northern-Hemisphere bred horse to do so.

Background

Comedy King was owned by Sol Green, one of Australia's biggest bookmakers and one of the country's richest men. On a trip to England in 1906 Green bought some racehorses and among them was the broodmare Tragedy Queen, which was in foal to the 1896 English Derby winner and legendary racehorse

Persimmon The persimmon () is the edible fruit of a number of species of trees in the genus '' Diospyros''. The most widely cultivated of these is the Chinese and Japanese kaki persimmon, ''Diospyros kaki''. In 2022, China produced 77% of the world's p ...

. After the foal was weaned it was exported to Australia where it was to race for Green under the name Comedy King.

Racing career

Comedy King won eight races in his career, with his most famous victory being the 1910

. Starting at the odds of 10/1 he won by a margin of a 1/2 neck carrying 7st 11 lb (49.5 kg) and collected first prize money of £6,178.

Stud career

Comedy King retired from racing in 1912 and commenced stud duties at owner Sol Green's Shipley Stud near

Warrnambool, Victoria Warrnambool (; Eastern Maar, Maar: ''Peetoop'' or ''Wheringkernitch'' or ''Warrnambool'') is a city on the south-western coast of Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. At the Census in Australia#2021, 2021 census, Warrnambool had a populati ...

. When the stud was dispersed in 1918, Comedy King was secured by pastoralist

Norman Falkiner Norman Fraser Falkiner (20 November 1872 – 11 May 1929) was an Australian politician. He was born in Ararat to grazier Frank Sadlier Falkiner and Emily Elizabeth Bazeley. He attended Geelong Grammar School and managed his father's statio ...

for 7,300 guineas. Comedy King had great success as a sire, producing the 1919

winner

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and the 1922 Cup winner, King Ingoda. He was also crowned Australian Champion stallion in 1920 and 1923. Comedy King died in December 1929 and was buried at Falkiner's Noorilim Stud. A few months after his death, Comedy King's remains were exhumed and his bones sent to be displayed at the newly formed Australian Institute of Anatomy. However, it's unknown if Comedy King's skeleton was ever assembled, and as recently as 2013 an attempt was made to match up boxes of equine bones at the institute to see if the horse could be “put back together”.

Pedigree

*^ Comedy King is

inbred Inbreeding is the production of offspring from the mating or breeding of individuals or organisms that are closely related genetically. By analogy, the term is used in human reproduction, but more commonly refers to the genetic disorders an ...

4S x 5D to the stallion Young Melbourne, meaning that he appears fourth generation on the sire side of his pedigree and fifth generation (via Young Alice)^ on the dam side of his pedigree.

References

{{reflist Racehorses bred in the United Kingdom Racehorses trained in Australia 1907 racehorse births 1929 racehorse deaths Thoroughbred family 7-e Melbourne Cup winners