1989 Melbourne Cup

The 1989 Melbourne Cup was a handicap horse race which took place on Tuesday, 7 November 1989 over 3200m, at Flemington Racecourse.

The race was won by the New Zealand bred stallion Tawriffic, trained by Lee Freedman and ridden by Shane Dye. The runner up was Super Impose also trained by Freedman and third place went to Kudz trained by Colin Hayes. The winning margin was two and a quarter lengths with a further short half head to third place. The winning time of 3:17.1 was a race record, beating the previous year's time set by Empire Rose but was it lowered again in the following year's Cup by Kingston Rule.

Background
Tawriffic was sired by Tawfig and his dam was Joyarty (by Noble Bijou). He did his early racing in New Zealand. Moving to Australia he then won the 1988 South Australian St Leger and 1989 AJC St Leger. After finishing second-last in the 1989 Caulfield Cup he was a 30/1 outsider in the Melbourne Cup. Tawriffic later won the 1989 C B Cox Stakes at Ascot Racecourse (Western Australia).

This win gave Lee Freedman his first Melbourne Cup training win. Lee went on to record five Melbourne Cup victories with Tawriffic, Subzero (1992), Doriemus (1995) and Makybe Diva (2004 and 2005).

It was the only Melbourne Cup win for jockey Shane Dye but he also placed third in the 1986 Melbourne Cup on Sea Legend and was runner up on Shiva's Revenge and Nothin' Leica Dane in the 1991 and 1995 Cups.

Field
The following are the placegetters in the 1989 Melbourne Cup.