Even in the play of highlights and lows have horse racing that few have experienced the extremes that Tony Shaw has.
In Alexandra Park on Friday evening, Shaw will stand his first representative in line like a Harness racing trainer in 11 years when Wotsonyyamind starts in Race 4.
Wotsonyyamind, a winner with three races on the South Island before he comes to the north to join Shaw, is an average horse in a normal race. The man behind him is anything but.
Shaw has cherished in the glow of the brightest lights of Racing, but had to endure his darkest moments.
He was once the regular driver of Yulestar, the gigantic Taranaki Pacer that he collaborated to win the new Zeeland Cup in Addington in 2000, then the largest stage of New Zealand Racing.
Six months later, Shaw produced a Miracle Drive on Yulestar to win the Inter Dominion in Queensland, after he conquered the Hunter Cup in Australia a year earlier in Australia.
On such days it feels like the good times will never end. They did that.
Shaw sustained a serious main injury when a pacer he rode, Boss Hog ran, fell into a race in Alexandra Park in March 2008.
He was placed in an induced coma and a part of his skull removed in a life -saving operation to remove liquid from his brain.
He lived for a few months without that part of his skull and when it was confirmed again, it started to sink back in his head, so that he needed a metal plate to hold it in place, then placed over the top with his skin.
Shaw looked surrealistic during the process and has not been driven in a race since then, but there was good news.
“They said that I couldn’t grow in that part of my head, so I went to make a towing, but they were wrong, the hair grew back,” he laughs.
Head injury can be cruel and rob the victims of the cognitive skills that are needed for many basic tasks, including the group of a second needed for training and boarding racing horses, which is so nuanced and yet dangerous.
So the last time Shaw took a horse, he was trained in the race in 2014.
He started a horse transport company, a job that is suitable for a man who loves horses with his natural warmth and constant smile, useful when people ask to trust you with their horse pride and joy.
But the darkness was not yet done with Tony Shaw.
In January 2021, Shaw’s 14-year-old son Hugo was killed when he collided with a truck while he rode on his bike in Papamoa.
Shaw’s always present smile disappeared and he needed professional help to get through a time that no parent should ever experience.
That tragedy was perhaps the last to have heard most people ever from Tony Shaw.
But it won’t be.
The now 58-year-old never hides for how hard the loss of Hugo was, nor the toll that it took at him.
But horses can heal, among other things, and in the end Shaw started to use his gift with them again.
He worked with them in Morrinsville when champion trainer Mark Purdon, who had moved to the north to Matamata, asked Shaw to help him.
One of their charges was 2023 Auckland Cup winner Akuta, who, like Shaw was broken and needed tender loving care and time to repair.
After 20 months in the Harness Racing Wilderness in Alexandra Park on Friday evening and Shaw, Akuta has now owned 10 percent of perhaps the best pacer in the country, Purdon’s way of thanking you for Shaw’s hundreds of hours of work.
“Tony did great, he has been so caring and methodically with him [Akuta]”Says Purdon.
Shaw has a new life and four weeks ago a baby daughter Molly had his new partner Nicole.
“To be in the vicinity of great horses, as they mark trains again, is great,” he says.
“And it is a special time at the moment. Molly has arrived and Nicole has been great for me.
“I took a step back from running the horse transport company, which is still going really well, and spend more time with the horses that I love.
“It is exciting to go back to the park with a horse in my colors, it was so long ago and now also a share in Akuta, it really means a lot.”
The smile is also back, the party energy that returns to Shaw’s voice.
“There have been some bloody difficult times, I’m not going to lie about that.
“But you continue and try to be grateful for the things you have.”
So on Friday evening, Tony Shaw, horse trainer, Renpaard-owner, father, partner and owner of an unused ticker will be back where he should be.
In Alexandra Park. Under the lights and out of darkness.
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Through Michael GuerinFor Harnas Racing New -Zeeland
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