Champion jockey Opie Bosson was halfway through a Christmas Day run when he knew his career was over.
“I knew I was done, I had nothing left,” Bosson told the Herald on Friday after announcing his shock retirement.
A genius in the saddle, sometimes troubled out of it, Bosson hasthreatened retirement before.
In his own mind, he may have even believed those times were real.
But under the searing Matamata sun on Wednesday, wearing his sweat gear to drip off the kilograms needed to ride at Ellerslie on Thursday, Bosson’s tank hit empty.
“I was out there running in my sweat gear and ran past other people enjoying their Christmas Day and I thought ‘what am I doing?’,” said the 44-year-old.
“I know I have thought about retiring before but this is it. There is definitely no coming back.
“I have been thinking about it for a while, to be honest since [champion racehorse] Imperatriz retired in April.
“I know I won’t get to the heights she took me to again and I just wondered more and more why I was doing it.”
Bosson has often struggled with his weight, which needs to get as low as 54kg to ride all the leading chances he would like to maximise his career potential and earning power.
He isn’t the only jockey fighting, often losing, that battle but for much of 2024 that discipline has become dread.
“The wasting [losing weight] has never really been easy but when your heart is in it and you are loving the racing then you can do it.
“But when your heart isn’t in it the wasting becomes too hard. You don’t want to and in the end you can’t do it anymore.
“That is how I felt on Christmas Day and I knew it wasn’t coming back.”
Bosson rode at Ellerslie on Thursday, finishing fourth in the Group 1 Zabeel Classic on Ladies Man, who at its previous start had given Bosson his 99th career Group 1 win, racing’s elite level.
The next question is obvious: why wouldn’t Bosson keep going to get to the magical 100, which he has stated was his great goal?
“I don’t want to be out there, especially in Group 1s, going around when I shouldn’t be,” he said.
“The horses and their owners deserve better than that and that is how people make mistakes, riding after wasting too hard or when their mind isn’t right.
“I don’t want to retire on a low or after an accident.”
As Bosson talks it is not with the desperation or dehydration of past, short-lived retirements. His voice is laced with relief and resignation.
He is already talking about tomorrows. Staying in racing, not on horseback but close to the animals that have provided the peaks of his personal rollercoaster.
“I will take some time to work it all out. I am still coming to terms with it.”
His loss to New Zealand racing will be immense.
Opie Bosson on Imperatriz. Photo / Supplied
Bosson is one of the few New Zealand sportspeople, especially those living here, to have frenzied crowds chant his name. “There is only one Opie Bosson” was the chorus when he dominated Karaka Millions meetings.
He made decisions that won people millions of dollars without thinking, and was gifted with instinct and affinity with horses.
Even New Zealand’s greatest modern day jockey and world champion James McDonald talks of being “schooled” by Bosson and puts him on the list of the best he has ridden against anywhere in the world.
As for Bosson’s best rides, his love for Imperatriz is obvious and he is proud of winning the Caulfield Cup on Mongolian Khan.
The list of thank yous is long: Te Akau boss David Ellis, trainers such as Mark Walker, Murray Baker, Allan Sharrock, even young Sam Bergerson, their training partners and all their staff.
“The owners who have put me on their horses, I have to thank them and all the horses I have been lucky to ride.”
Bosson brought up his 2000th New Zealand win aboard Move To Strike at Te Rapa in December 2023 and finishes with a career tally of 2146 wins, 2059 of those coming in New Zealand, said manager Aidan Rodley.
Bosson won 51 races in Australia, 16 of those at Group 1 level, as well as 31 in Singapore, including two Singapore Group 1 races that didn’t count towards his international Group 1 tally.
“It has been amazing. Hard at times but I have been doing this for 30 years. That is long enough.
“I don’t know how I know it’s time to finish but it is. I can feel it inside.”
In the end, the numbers won’t really matter.
Whether Bosson rode 99 Group 1s or 101, he did something only the greats in any sporting arena can achieve.
He was, on his best days, able to influence and even control outcomes simply by being in the contest.
