“But now it is has sunk in a bit more and I realise how hard it is to get to 1000 wins and to be in that company it feels like a bigger deal.
“And I have had so many people contact me about it so you realise it means a lot.”
Butcher is disarmingly modest and constantly cheerful but he is also a showman which is why the bigger the stage the happier he is.
“I had people ask me on Friday what was the biggest of the 1000 wins here and to be honest it was just a few weeks ago when Merlin won The Race By Grins,” said Butcher.
“I love the big races and as soon as The Race by Grins became a thing three years ago I wanted to be in and win it.
“So to do that for three of my biggest supporters in Barry [Purdon] and Scotty [Phelan] as well as [owner] Dean Shannon meant a lot.
“That is my biggest win and driving those big winners is what motivates me the most, maybe more than the milestones.
“I love the big stage, you get a chance to prove yourself.”
Butcher now hopes Merlin can take him to his version of harness racing’s promised land.
“I’d love to win a New Zealand Cup and a Miracle Mile and he could be a horse who takes me to those races with a genuine chance,” he explained.
“You look at some of those great drivers and they rarely get on winning chances in those races and I think I am very lucky, to have such great support and so many top horses.
“What Barry and Scotty, often with Dean, are doing going to the sales and securing such good-quality horses has put me in a privileged position.”
Butcher also says he is privileged to have David Butcher as his father and mentor,
“Dad has been great teaching me the finer points of driving my whole career and because he has passed plenty of them on to me it has fast-tracked things.
“I have learned things from Dad that would have taken me years longer to learn if it wasn’t for him. Some drivers never have anybody to teach them those things.”
One of those attributes is the astounding Butcher patience, with both David and Zachary not scared to hold their horses up until even the last 100m of a race in an attempt to divebomb their rivals.
In an age of tight lines (getting horses to race up on the bit) and front-of-the-field drivers, the art of the swoop is a dying skill and the Butchers may be New Zealand’s best exponents of it.
While Butcher is tremendously proud of his heritage, he harbours no current ambitions to one day surpass his father, who sits on 2631 New Zealand wins, including the Group 1 Breckon Farms Young Guns Final on Friday night.
Averaging around 70 wins a a year, Zachary could join the 2000-win club by the time he turns 47 - but he doesn’t think he will ever be the winningest driver in his family.
“I know things can change but I am not sure I want to be driving in my 50s, I honestly think it is a young man’s game these days and heading more that way.
“Don’t get me wrong, we have some great drives [at] that age and older but I want to train and I think long-term I will get just as much satisfaction out of doing that.”
Such decisions or opportunities are a long way off, with Butcher only just approaching his prime and very clearly one of the best big-race drivers in New Zealand.
For sheer ability, Butcher may already be in a club even more rare than those who have driven 1000 winners before him.
He may be one of the few drivers who actually make the winning difference in the biggest races.
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.
