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Stephen Marsh reflects on Hastings premier treble
October 12, 2015
A tired but happy Stephen Marsh had plenty to reflect on as he went about his stable chores on Sunday morning after notching a winning treble at Hastings less than 24 hours earlier.
The Cambridge based trainer provided one of the day’s feature race winners in Serious Satire who took out the Group III Gold Trail Stakes before All Torn Up and Seize The Moment added two more victories to move their mentor into the top 10 in the trainer’s premiership.
“It was a super day for the stable and is a real credit to the team I have working with me as they have put in plenty of hard work to get the horses to the level they are at,” he said.
“It’s also very pleasing when a plan works out as we do target the premier days. That’s where the prizemoney is and when you can win a $40,000 race it goes a long way to balancing the books.”
While Serious Satire made most of the headlines leading into the day Marsh was quietly confident his other two winners could deliver a victory for their connections.
“Seize The Moment is a very good galloper who went a beauty at Taupo fresh-up for third,” he said.
“His work since then had been very good and with natural improvement I was confident he was in with a big chance. He is the type who will win a good race in the future so we will start to shape a programme for him with that in mind.”
Marsh was also confident of a good showing from former Hong Kong galloper All Torn Up before the barrier draws for the weekend came out on Wednesday.
“Bryce Tankard gave me a call a few months ago to say he had the horse coming back from Hong Kong and would I like to train him,’ he explained.
“I gave Bruce Harvey a call and when he agreed to become involved we got the horse out to his place when he came back.
“Bruce has done plenty of work on the treadmill with him as he does have a few issues but he is a very good horse. He galloped really well on Wednesday morning so we were confident he could win with a decent barrier but when he drew the carpark that confidence took a real knock.
“He’s not a sprinter but those type of horses can go well when they’re fresh and that’s what has happened. I think you will see how good he is when he gets over more ground so there’s a lot to look forward to with him.”
Marsh also advised Serious Satire, No More Tears and Nahema had all come through their exertions in the Gold Trail Stakes well with all three likely to have one more run before heading south for the Group I 1,000 Guineas next month.
story from Stuff.co.nz (NZ Racing Desk)