Jockey Opie Bosson in right head space and weight range for racing return

Opie Bosson will be back riding in August. Photo / Trish Dunell

The most surprising aspect of champion jockey Opie Bosson’s comeback is his weight.

The 44-year-old superstar of the saddle has confirmed what many horse racing industry insiders had suspected, that he will return to race riding in August after a brief retirement.

Bosson stunned punters when retiring on 99 domestic Group 1 winners last December, his motivation at an all-time low after years of battling his weight and as he was also going through a marriage break-up.

There was always the feeling that once Bosson got his body and head right, he would return. After all, who retires on 99 not out?

But while the return isn’t a surprise, just how right Bosson has got his body is.

He is 58.5kg, down from a summer high of around 65kg and aiming to weigh around 56kg when he starts back in the first week of August.

“I have been training hard and keeping off the beer,” Bosson told the Herald.

“I feel good and now I have decided I am going to do this I feel really good about it.

“I want to get down to 56kg to give myself options as a lot of the good fillies and mares carry around that weight.

“I have been riding track work and jump outs and return to the trials [Cambridge] on Tuesday.”

While the Opie’s Century countdown will be a focal point of his comeback, he won’t get a shot at that until the Tarzino Trophy at Ellerslie on September 6 – but he already has a first main target in mind.

“There is a $100,000 Polytrack Championship race at Awapuni on August 3 I’d love to win,” he says.

After that he says he can’t wait to partner Group 1-placed two-year-old Hostility when he returns on a 2000 Guineas path. Whether he gets to ride Te Akau stars like Damask Rose, Return To Conquer and La Dorada is undecided, though, as that trio are all set to start their spring racing in Victoria.

“We haven’t spoken much about the Australian horses [trained at Cranbourne] and my involvement over there,” says Bosson, who is expected to be on some sort of retained rider agreement with Te Akau.

“Both Damask Rose and Return To Conquer are already over at Cranbourne and La Dorada heads there on Wednesday.”

Te Akau heading into the new season with their stable strength split either side of the Tasman won’t be the only professional change for Bosson next season, with former jockey Michael Coleman taking over as his riding agent.

Bosson’s return to the jockey’s room will mean New Zealand’s riding ranks, particularly in the north, are the deepest they have been in at least a decade in terms of experience.

He will join soon-to-be premiership winner Craig Grylls, former champs Michael McNab and Warren Kennedy, Joe Doyle, Sam Spratt, George Rooke and a long list of other proven Group 1 jockeys, including Samantha Collett, who has returned from Queensland.

Fewer than half of those seniors will be riding at Te Rapa today, with some still on holiday, while the card also has reduced opportunities, with three jumps races and the trainers of plenty of the horses in the main two races using apprentices to claim.

The $40,000 main sprint pips the Te Awamutu Cup for race of the day at a typical winter meeting where how the horses handle the track will matter as much, if not more, than class on the Heavy 10.

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.