Oscar Bonavena beating Australian champion Just Believe at Addington in 2024. Photo / Ajay Berry
Mark Purdon has been doing this too long to believe in fairy tales.
They happen of course. Racing is perfectly set up for them, all those colliding story lines in the same race.
Usually somebody’s fairy tale is lying in there, waiting to be exposed by a win.
Alexandra Park has seen a couple in the last few weeks. Young Harrison Orange driving his first Group 1 winner and beating his father Blair Orange in the Anzac Cup two weeks ago.
Then, just last Friday, when the filly Cath won the Northern Oaks to give 20-year-old reinsman Seth Hill his first Group 1 in the colours of his father Brendon Hill.
And fairy tales go all the way to the top in this game.
Just a few days ago, Golden Tempo won the Kentucky Derby coming from last and Cherie DeVaux became the first female trainer to win North America’s greatest race, while jockey brothers Jose and Irad Ortiz quinellaed it.
You know somebody is writing that movie script as you read this.
But that is the problem with racing fairy tales, you still need the horsepower.
They are, more often than not, a young man’s (sorry that should be young person’s) game.
It has been a long time since Oscar Bonavena was young.
The mercurial trotter runs his last race in the $200,000 Reharvest Rowe Cup at Alexandra Park tomorrow night and then, for the first time in eight years, harness racing won’t have Oscar.
Remarkably for a horse born when Barack Obama was still President of the United States, Oscar is third-favourite to make the farewell win fairy tale come true.
The 10-year-old has become part of our racing lives, one of the few horses in the country whose name can be shortened to one word without a shadow of a doubt who you are talking about.
A brilliant juvenile who won his first race before being purchased for then huge money by champion trainer Mark Purdon, Oscar then became his own mini-series of drama.
He exploded on to the scene with his greyhound-like frame and whirling legs, so fast that he started odds-on in the 2019 Dominion Handicap at just his 13th start.
He finished 10th, beaten by 44m.
That started a love-hate relationship for punters, as Oscar at his best was dazzling and at his worst a punting Ponzi scheme: you put your money in but never got it back.
“The problem started with his knees first,” trainer-driver Purdon said.
“Then he had other issues and some of those created secondary issues.”
At one stage Purdon gave up and sent Oscar to Regan Todd to be beach-trained. It didn’t work.
Purdon’s son Nathan Purdon has had a go at training Oscar and found him a Rubik’s Cube of frustration: get one side right and a problem appears somewhere else.
In 2022, Oscar went an entire year racing at the top level without winning a race.
The horse named after a boxer was on the canvas.
Then in late 2023, his personal renaissance started, seemingly out of nowhere.
The body felt better, the mind followed suit.
He smashed his opponents in our greatest trot, the Dominion at Addington, starting a sequence of six stunning wins, four at Group level.
Oscar capped a career-defining year by beating Australian champion Just Believe in the New Zealand Free-For-All at Addington in 2024, proving that when he was sound and happy, he has the motor of a champion.
“He is a great horse but he would have been a champion without all the issues he has had,” Purdon, the man best qualified in New Zealand racing to use the C word, said.
“But to his credit, even when we have counted him out, he has bounced back.
“And when he was at his peak and you could drive him for one run, it was an amazing feeling when he sprinted.”
The last time that sprint carried Oscar all the way to the winner’s circle was on the grass at Motukarara on September 21 when he came from a 30m handicap and seemingly hopeless position to street his opponents.
He hasn’t won in 14 starts since.
Purdon has known racing’s undefeated opponent – time – had caught up with Oscar for a while, the desire to run past inferior rivals waning.
“He is still healthy and seems to be enjoying it but it just isn’t the horse he used to be,” Purdon said.
“He could run top-three this Friday, who knows, maybe better but I don’t really expect him to win.”
But Oscar has picked the right Rowe Cup to bid us farewell in, with few rivals in this race in his class if he produces even 90% of his best.
If he can turn that clock back one more time, not even for the entire race, for just the last 30 seconds, he can win.
Will it happen? Probably not.
But it only takes one hero to make a fairy tale.
Who: 10-year-old trotting great.
Breeding: Majestic Son-Now’s The Moment.
Trainers: Mark Purdon (majority of career), Nathan Purdon, Regan Todd.
Career stats: 107 starts, 36 wins, 34 placings.
Earnings: $1,401,505.
Last dance: Tomorrow night’s Reharvest Rowe Cup at Alexandra Park.
What next: Oscar has already started his stallion career.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.