He was once the regular driver of Yulestar, the giant Taranaki pacer who he partnered to win the New Zealand Cup at Addington in 2000, then New Zealand racing’s biggest stage.
Six months later, Shaw produced a miracle drive on Yulestar to win the Inter Dominion in Queensland, having captured the Hunter Cup in Australia with the great pacer a year earlier.
On days like that, it feels like the good times will never end.
They did.
Shaw suffered a severe head injury when a pacer he was driving called Boss Hog fell in a race at Alexandra Park in March, 2008.
He was placed in an induced coma and a section of his skull removed in a life-saving operation to remove fluid from his brain.
He lived without that section of his skull for several months and when it was reattached, it started to sink back into his head so he needed a metal plate attached to it to keep it in place, with his skin then placed back over the top.
Shaw looked surreal during the process and hasn’t driven in a race since, but there was some good news.
“They said I wouldn’t be able to grow hair in that part of my head so I went and got a toupee made but they were wrong, the hair grew back,” he laughs.
Head injuries can be cruel, robbing the victims of the cognitive skills required for many basic tasks, including the split second judgment needed for training and driving racehorses, which is so nuanced yet dangerous.
So the last time Shaw took a horse he trained to the races was in 2014.
He started a horse transport business, a job suited to a man who loves horses with his natural warmth and constant smile, helpful when asking people to trust you with their equine pride and joy.
But the darkness hadn’t finished with Tony Shaw yet.
In January 2021, Shaw’s 14-year-old son Hugo was killed when he collided with a truck while riding his bike in Pāpāmoa.
Shaw’s ever-present smile vanished and he needed professional help to get through a time no parent should ever experience.
That tragedy might have been the last most people ever heard of Tony Shaw.
But it won’t be.
The now 58-year-old never hides from how hard the loss of Hugo was nor the toll it took on him.
But among other things, horses can heal and eventually Shaw started using his gift with them again.
He was working with them at Morrinsville when champion trainer Mark Purdon, who had moved north to Matamata, asked Shaw to help him out.
One of their charges was 2023 Auckland Cup winner Akuta, who like Shaw had been broken and needed tender loving care, and time, to repair.
Akuta resumes after 20 months in the harness racing wilderness at Alexandra Park on Friday night and Shaw now owns 10 per cent of maybe the best pacer in the country, Purdon’s way of saying thank you for Shaw’s hundreds of hours of work.
“Tony has done an amazing job, he has been so caring and methodical with him [Akuta],” says Purdon.
Shaw has a new life and four weeks ago had a baby daughter Molly with his new partner Nicole.
“To be around great horses like the ones Mark trains again is wonderful,” he says.
“And it is a special time at the moment. Molly has arrived and Nicole has been great for me.
“I have taken a step back from running the horse transport business, which is still going really well, and spending more time with the horses, which I love.
“It is exciting to be going back to The Park with a horse in my colours, it has been so long and now also having a share in Akuta, it really means a lot.”
The laugh is back too, the matey energy returning to Shaw’s voice.
“There have been some bloody tough times, I am not going to lie about that.
“But you keep going and try to be grateful for the things you have.”
So on Friday night Tony Shaw, horse trainer, racehorse-owner, father, partner and owner of an unused toupee will be back where he should be.
At Alexandra Park. Under the lights and out of the darkness.
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.
