“The racing team will be quite small over the next few months, as a lot of the better horses are spelling or about to,” he says.
“Antrim Coast has had a great campaign, so he will go to the paddock and we won’t rush him back for the Hastings races - I don’t think we need to because he has so many big-money summer targets.
“Super Photon will start his spell on Monday and be set for the 2000 Guineas.
“He is a very good horse and he is a half-brother to Mo’unga, who has just been retired to stand at stud.
“We have had some big offers for him but the owners have decided to keep him, and he has some really big targets, and who knows, maybe a Group 1 to give him a shot at a stallion career.”
While Marsh won’t have huge numbers racing in the last three months of the season, he still looks set to top $5m in stakes in New Zealand alone, with Antrim Coast having won plenty more in Australia as well.
His team here have earned $4,858,460, over $1.3m more than his previous best domestic season last year.
“To be closing in on $5m in stakes at home is a wonderful achievement [by] the whole team at the stables.
“It is a lot of money, and the sort of number that wouldn’t have seemed possible a few years ago.”
Marsh is also certain to finish second again on the premiership, with 77 wins to Mark Walker and Sam Bergerson’s 145. It will be the fifth consecutive year he has finished second on the national premiership.
“We have had an incredible year and the team have a lot to be proud of.”
Derby drama
Mystik Dan won the 150th running of the Kentucky Derby in a dramatic photo finish at Churchill Downs in Kentucky yesterday (NZ time).
He edged out Sierra Leone and Forever Young in a rare three-horse photo finish to capture the first leg of the Triple Crown.
An 18-1 chance, Mystik Dan made the most of a perfect rail-gap ride around the home turn to hold on from Sierra Leone and Forever Young, the latter pair engaging in a bumping duel down the home straight.
It was the 10th time in the Derby’s history a horse has won by a nose and the first since Grindstone in 1996.
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.
