Racing: Stable goes into overdrive

Espresso Martini (outer) beats Jip Jip Rock in the Trevor Eagle Memorial at Ellerslie on Saturday. Photo / Trish Dunell

If you want to stay at the top you have got to keep improving and champion trainers Murray Baker and Andrew Forsman intend doing just that.

Which could mean a stable record haul of stakes winners for the season judging by their efforts at Ellerslie on Saturday.

Baker and Forsman set a national record for training wins in a term when they racked up 142 winners in New Zealand alone last season, winning the premiership by a staggering 61 victories.

Among those were 20 stakes (listed or group wins) in New Zealand as well as four in Australia and after a slower than usual start to the season they have kicked into overdrive on the stakes-race winning front again.

Espresso Martini and Love Affair gave them two more when capturing the feature races at Ellerslie on Saturday, taking them to 10 stakes wins by the first week of December and seemingly putting them on track to go well past their 20 black types domestically last season.

"That has to be one of the goals and I think we have the horses to give it a good shot," explains Forsman.

"We have a lot of good young three-year-olds and plenty of good quality older horses like Lizzie L'Amour, Jon Snow, Zacada, Nicoletta and well-known horses like that.

"So we have some real ammunition at the moment and even though the season started a bit slower things are ticking over nicely now.

"We realise how important stakes wins are for owners, especially with some of the fillies and mares, so it would be great to try and get past the 20 from last season."

The stable have been remarkably consistent in securing stakes winners, with 64 domestically in the last four seasons and that doesn't count huge group one wins in Australia with the likes of Mongolian Khan, Turn Me Loose, Jon Snow and Bonneval.

They do however find themselves still trailing Te Akau's Jamie Richards in this season's premiership, their 40 winners so far one behind the Tangerine Team's 41.

But even Richards, in his first season going it alone as Te Akau's trainer, admits he will struggle to hold that lead, suggesting he doesn't have the numbers for the premiership bid.

The TAB agrees, with Baker-Forsman now $1.30 to defend their title after getting as long as $1.45 two weeks ago, with Richards the only other player seriously in that market at $3.20.

Stephen Marsh, who has been in rare form the last month, sits third on the premiership with 28 wins.

That Love Affair got her first stakes win in the $70,000 Eagle Technology Stakes came as no surprise even though she did have to overcome a muddling tempo and the Auckland weather that threatened to rain on her parade all day but never did.

She could head to the Cal Isuzu Stakes at Te Rapa in two weeks and even the $100,000 Rich Hill Mile on New Year's Day, with every feature she can contest a bonus as it would surprise to see her racing past the end of this season.

But while Love Affair's win wasn't unexpected Espresso Martini's victory in the Trevor Eagle Memorial for the three-year-olds wasn't in the forefront of Forsman's mind as he drove to Ellerslie on Saturday. "She is one of those fillies who has just kept improving and stepping up," he admits. "So to get her black type this early in her career is a real bonus and while she is fit and happy we will probably keep going and see how far she can go."

Espresso Martini came off the back of Jip Jip Rock and took the length of the Ellerslie straight to get past her in a push-button ride from Leith Innes.

Innes rode Espresso Martini's dam, Keepa Cruisin, a half-sister to champion mare Seachange, to win the Levin Classic as a three-year-old so after her win on Saturday, Espresso Martini is already a very commercial broodmare in waiting.

Just as importantly the jockeys were thrilled with how Ellerslie's new surface stood up and while the bigger test will come on a rainy day, so far the extensive drainage work over the winter looks to be paying dividends.