Trainer Stephen Marsh eyes international wins after stellar NZ season

Trainer Stephen Marsh is becoming a powerhouse in horse racing.

• Stephen Marsh is having his best season, surpassing $6 million in domestic stakes with multiple Group 1 wins.
• Marsh is expanding internationally, starting with Randwick and then the QEII Cup in Hong Kong.
• He has five runners at Ellerslie, with Penman well-placed in the three-year-old race.

He may be about to become Mr International but for now Stephen Marsh will settle for nailing being Mr Trans Tasman.

The Cambridge trainer is having the best season of his career having just topped a personal best $6 million in domestic stakes after racking up a summer of Group 1 wins.

While he has a huge hand at Ellerslie today, including five reps in one race, Marsh will cast his net wider in coming weeks starting with Randwick today and then on to Hong Kong for the QEII Cup at the end of April, with El Vencedor to be his first truly international runner.

“It is a pretty exciting time and I can’t wait to get up there,” says Marsh.

“It has been a huge season and we have had 14 black type winners back home which is incredible and a credit to our staff and the owners we have supporting us.”

Marsh is in Sydney for the first day of The Championships where he has Love Poem chasing more black type in the Group 3 last race on the card.

“She is a good filly and has to be a real chance under the conditions. But we also know it is not easy to win races at these huge Australian carnivals.”

Closer to home Marsh has five runners in the three-year-old race at Ellerslie including two coming out of our best three-year-old races on Champions Day.

Penman had no luck from a wide draw and threw a shoe in the NZB Kiwi but looks well placed from a good draw in today’s 1500m Race 5, albeit he has found himself at the top of the handicaps very quickly.

Among his rivals is stablemate Bourbon Proof, dropping back sharply in distance from the 2400m of the NZ Derby to 1500m and while nobody doubts his class, that is a recipe that rarely produces winners.

“I think it will come down to luck but Penman is obviously better suited by the distance,” says Marsh.

Among the rivals for the Marsh five-for at Ellerslie will be Sister Sugar, trained by Shaun and Emma Clotworthy, who take Willydoit to the ATC Derby today, a race before Love Poem’s at Randwick.

Sydney was fine and warm yesterday so Randwick has come back from a Heavy 8 to Soft 6 very quickly and should continue to improve today, ending up in the ideal range for Willydoit.

With Shaun Clotworthy suggesting the enormously-talented NZ Derby winner has improved since that March 8 triumph, he can complete the Derby double because while there may be some doubts over the NZ three-year-old’s form, the absolute best Australian three-year-olds like Broadsiding aren’t among his Derby opponents today.

The best chance of a New Zealand win today is Joliestar in the A$3million ($3.3m) T J Smith as the Cambridge Stud-owned mare looks to add Sydney’s biggest autumn sprint to the G1 Newmarket she won at Flemington four weeks ago.

She will be minus regular jockey James McDonald as the superstar ex-pat rider misses his second major Sydney meeting in a week so he can ride Romantic Warrior in the Dubai Turf, the 1800m Group 1, to be run at 2.15am (NZ time) on Sunday.

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.