Stephen Marsh.
The biggest season of Stephen Marsh’s career has also been the bravest.
Because as big as his stable stats are, they only tell part of the story of the most successful season of the Cambridge trainer’s career.
Marsh crossed the $5 million in stakes milestone for the season, with two months still to go, when Hoard The Bourbon won on his home track on Wednesday, taking his stable earnings to $5,004,895, almost 50 per cent more than he has earned in any other season during his career.
That comes courtesy of 10 black-type wins, a number he has reached before - but this time they were the big, chunky black-type wins that count: a Karaka Million and Sistema Stakes with Velocious, the Telegraph with Mercurial and a Bonecrusher NZ Stakes with El Vencedor.
“I’ll be honest, to win races like that and then this week get to $5 million, I’m pretty proud of that,” Marsh told the Herald.
“A lot of hard work goes into it and it requires a lot of support for the owners, so to get this level of results for them is pretty special.” Marsh will finish second in the premiership for the fifth straight year and has all but given up on closing the gap on Te Akau under their current structure, but this year feels different even if the win count greatly isn’t.
“There are races people want to win, like a Karaka Million and those big Group 1s, and to get them is as high as you can go in this country.”
But Marsh’s season of success came with a summer of sadness as his beloved mother, Kay, had a shock illness diagnosis in December and died on Valentine’s Day, her loss felt throughout the close-knit racing industry.
“It was hard, very hard on all of us [family] but we stuck together and we are getting through it even though we all miss her very much,” says Marsh.
“But she loved what I did for a job and what Dad [Bruce] did before me, so I know she was proud of what we have achieved and that means a lot.”
That Marsh, who was very close to his mother, didn’t lose focus or dedication to his craft during those darkest days speaks volumes about who he has become as a person as much as a horse trainer.
Now he looks forward to the new season armed with serious horses to chase the biggest races, like the new $3.5m NZB Kiwi at Ellerslie on March 8, for which Marsh hopes to attract the interest of at least a couple of slot holders.
“Obviously we have Velocious and some other really good rising 3-year-olds like Super Photon so it is very much a race we want to be part of.”
While starting to power down his team for winter he still takes four chances to Pukekohe today and says the winning for the season may not be over.
“The thing about Saturday will be how they handle the track because it was really heavy there last week,” he offers. “But I rate all four I am taking there and we have Opie on two of them, Shaking Stevens [R2, No 3] and The Exponent [R3, No 1] and they can both win if they handle the track.
“Our best chance though might be the longest-priced of them all. Irish Miss [R7, No 9] won well in the heavy at Taupō last start so she might be over the odds.” Today’s other domestic thoroughbred meeting is at Whanganui, which hosts two black-type races including a decent version of the Castletown Stakes.
In Brisbane, Kiwi 3-year-olds First Innings and Moonlight Magic contest the A$1m Queensland Derby for Cambridge trainer Andrew Forsman.