Overdose (horse)

Overdose
Overdose, with Christophe Soumillon up, winning the OTP-Hungária Cup
Sire	Starborough
Grandsire	Soviet Star (USA)
Dam	Our Poppet (IRE)
Damsire	Warning
Sex	Stallion
Foaled	2005
Country	Great Britain
Colour	Bay
Breeder	G. and Mrs Robinson
Owner	Zoltan MIKÓCZY MIKO Racing and Trading Ltd
Trainer	Jozef Roszival (current) Sandor Ribarszki
Record	19 starts: 16-0-1
Earnings	£151,311
Last updated on 30 August 2010

Overdose (2 April 2005 in Nottinghamshire, Great Britain – 1 July 2015 in Germany) was a Hungarian Thoroughbred racehorse. During his career he was victorious in sixteen of his nineteen races.

Overdose was English-bred and was sold at Tattersalls December Yearling Sales in November 2006 for just 2,000 guineas (£2,100). His sire was a miler called Starborough and he was out of Our Poppet (IRE) by Warning. He was a half-brother of three winners.

His owner, Zoltán Mikóczy purchased Overdose only by chance and has been quoted as saying "I just put my hand up for fun, I like excitement of the horse auctions. I thought no horse can go this cheap and surely somebody else would bid. He's short and I'd say kind of ugly, so of course nobody wanted him."

Overdose had an unbeaten series of 14 races. In these races he won with a total of 116,5 lengths, which means 8,3 lengths per race in average.

He ran a new track record at his home track (Kincsem Park, Budapest, Hungary), for his first ever race (in which he was victorious with 18 lengths).

In 2008 he was named Wunderpferd (wonderhorse) in Germany, for winning German sprint races – including the Group 2 Goldene Peitsche – in such a dominant style.

He won a Group I race at Longchamp, but unfortunately the race was declared void due to a non-opening gate. His time was only 0,1 second behind the track record of Habibti. He did not participated in the re-run at the end of the day, since his unbeaten record was at risk. Only a month later Overdose won a Group III race in Rome, with a dominating 10 lengths.

In the 2008 world thoroughbred rankings Overdose was among a the top sprinters (4th at Timeform with a rating of 126, and 6th at IFHA with 120), despite he did not win a Group I race (at least not officially).

In 2009 Christophe Soumillon volunteered to ride the horse. After his year opening race at Kincsem Park, Budapest, Overdose was called the Budapest Bullet in Britain, and appeared on the cover of the New York Times, which named him the "Hungarian Seabiscuit".

In mid-2009 one of his hooves became inflamed, which resulted in laminitis. This put the horse's whole career in danger. His recovery lasted for 15 months. Overdose returned in July 2010, with two victories in Bratislava and Budapest, growing his unbeaten record to 14 races.