All good things must at some point come to an end, and while many thought he may be an exception to that rule, the curtain fell on the racing career of an absolute marvel, Cosmic Bonus, at Gosford on Tuesday night.
The dog unfortunately dropped a back pin muscle, and trainer Evelyn Harris immediately decided that would be the end of an outstanding career, and the dog will now go to stud.
Making his debut back on October 7, 2016 at Casino, an event he would win, Cosmic Bonus would race on for almost four years and have another 148 starts.
But what was truly amazing was that he would win 72 of his 149 starts, and be placed another 43 times, earning prizemoney in 115 of those 149 starts or 77 per cent of the time he raced.
In total Cosmic Bonus earned $408,210, a large slice of that coming in 2018 when on the night of the inaugural Million Dollar Chase, he took out the $100,000 to the winner Masters Meteor.
Earlier that year Cosmic Bonus took out the Group 2 Gosford Gold Cup Final, and the Sprinters’ Cup at the Grafton Winter Carnival, and he finished 2018 by running second Fab Fit in the Group 3 Ipswich Cup, then second to Hasten Slowly in the Group 1 Brisbane Cup at Albion Park.
Cosmic Bonus was third behind Beast Unleashed trying to defend his Gosford Gold Cup title in 2019, and would finish fifth to Blabba Mouth in the 2019 Masters Meteor.
He retires still holding the 411m track record at Casino, a mark he set a months shy of his fifth birthday in November last year.
