Miss Janet and Michael McNab bolted away with the SkyCity Star Way Stakes. Photo / Kenton Wright
Stephen Marsh has two targets left in the best season of his career but admits that one may be just out of his grasp.
Marsh was the trainer of the summer thanks primarily to the whirlwind arrival of Well Written but with plenty of high-quality back-up.
That was emphasised by the unknown all but Miss Janet winning the $100,000 SkyCity Star Way Stakes at Ellerslie on Saturday in the Go Racing colours to give Marsh his 14th black type win for the season.
That puts him two behind his annual nemesis Te Akau’s Mark Walker and Sam Bergerson who have 16 black type wins after they beat Marsh for the black type title last season.
With 17 black type flat races left in New Zealand this season the battle is on but could be one-sided.
“As much as I’d like to think we can train more black type winners than them I think we will run out of numbers,” admits Marsh.
“Things will start to slow down for us and while we will try and have good numbers at the Ellerslie meetings still remaining, I don’t see us taking 10 or 12 to the heavy track meetings.”
While the black type title and premiership will likely belong to Te Akau again, Marsh is only $80,000 off his personal best stakes record of $6,984,788 and set to sail past $7 million in stakes for the season.
“That is really remarkable because at the start of this season we thought it would be an enormous job to equal last season’s numbers.
“When you consider El Vencedor won nearly $1.5m last year and but around $300,000 this season we are very proud to be heading toward our first $7m season.”
Of course, Well Written, who is near certain to be crowned Horse of the Year, helped enormously and Marsh has cautious words of optimism about how the glamour girl is developing.
“She has put on some weight and condition in the spelling paddock so things are looking really good.”
That could sum up Marsh’s whole season as his star is growing and with it comes the backing to buy the yearlings he wants, the snowball effect of winning at the highest level.
Marsh and Go Racing also had the third placed So Fear in Saturday’s juvenile feature so the Cambridge trainer has plenty of emerging firepower to aim at the spring features.
New Zealand’s most exciting young stallion Sword Of State is moving into the big boy’s ranks for the next breeding season.
Cambridge Stud has announced the son of Snitzel will stand at $50,000 for the new breeding season as his stock set tongues wagging on the track and in the sales ring this term.
Sword Of State had two pre-Christmas juvenile stakes winners in Australia which is unheard of for the first crop of a New Zealand-based stallion and while setbacks cost his best son Warwoven a Group 1 victory he was clearly in the elite of his crop.
With Sword Of State’s own superstar sire Snitzel having died, Sword Of State looks certain to secure a full book at the $50,000 price, helped even more by the fact that one of his sons fetched top price at the Karaka yearling sales in January.
After a return to its glory days this summer Cambridge Stud is not resting on its laurels, welcoming exceptional European miler Charyn to the roster.
Charyn won the Group 2 Critérium de Maisons-Laffitte at age 2, but it was as a 4-year-old that he moved into the upper echelon, winning Europe’s premier mile contests: the Queen Anne Stakes, Prix Jacques le Marois and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes to become the first horse to complete the prestigious Group 1 treble.
Charyn is the highest earner by Dark Angel, a champion sire in Great Britain and Ireland whose influence is already being felt in Australasia through his successful sire son Harry Angel, and will stand at $35,000 plus GST.
Chaldean will also stand at $35,000 plus GST this coming breeding season, Almanzor stands at $25,000 and Hello Youmzain at $20,000 while Embellish is doing a job that makes his $5000 fee one of the best value options in the country.
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.