A thrilling start to the day at Flemington on Saturday with the emergence of a smart performer in the Cosmic Force debutant Wonder Boy in the open juvenile event over 1200m.

Settled back in the field by Luke Currie, the Jerome Hunter-trained gelding savaged the line to defeat Godolphin’s well seasoned favourite Pisces by a neck.

“He’s a nice horse, even looking at him in the yard, he’s a really nice style of horse and cantered down to the gates lovely,” Currie said.

“He’s still very new, very green as you can imagine, his first start. He’d sort of looked like that in his jump outs; he’d been back, he’d been forward, looked like he got off the bridle and then he steamed home.

“Today, he jumped quite well and travelled well enough but then when the pressure went on, it took him a while to pick up and blend.”

“He just slowly made that ground, and his strongest part of the race was on the line.”

A $125,000 purchase for Graeme Gathercole’s Graebar Park from the Rothwell Park Thoroughbred draft at the 2022 National Weanling Sale, Wonder Boy is the third winner from as many to race for the classy sakes-placed Haradasun mare Beatniks.

Beatniks was bought by Kingstar Farm for $140,000 at the 2022 Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale and has a weanling colt by Wild Ruler and was covered by Extreme Choice to Northern Hemisphere time this year.

Wonder Boy is the seventh winner for Cosmic Force, who stands at a fee of $11,000 this spring.