Sam Spratt strikes a familiar pose after winning her third Telegraph on Mercurial.“It’s a while since I came up with the target of 20 Group One wins and it’s pretty cool to think I’m now so close.”
From the time she began riding in 2001, one thing that has been a constant in Sam Spratt’s jockey career has been her cheerful disposition.
Winners have been a regular feature too, topping 1,000 at the start of the season and making headlines last weekend when she claimed her third Gr. 1 Telegraph on Mercurial at Trentham and less than 24 hours later became the first jockey to win a race on Ellerslie’s new StrathAyr track on another member of Cambridge trainer Stephen Marsh’s stable, Merchant Queen.
Although based in Auckland, Trentham has been central to Spratt’s career. She actually lived her early years in the Hutt Valley before her family moved north and she signed up with Takanini trainers Colin Jillings and Richard Yuill. After riding more than 80 winners in the first three years of her apprenticeship, her career came to a sudden halt on Wellington Cup day, 2003.
Leading a three-year-old sprint field down the Trentham chute, her mount Dragon Tiger became disorientated and attempted to jump the running rail. Spratt suffered serious head injuries in a terrible fall, but despite doctors’ warnings that her career had ended, she took a typically opposite stance.
During three years on the sideline she married fellow jockey Opie Bosson and became mother to now 18-year-old Cody. The marriage didn’t last but Spratt’s determination stood to her and she returned with a vengeance with 41 wins in the 2006-07 season. Two years later she led the premiership for much of the season, only to go down by 13 wins to the new kid on the block, James McDonald, but still rode 112 winners.
That tally remains a personal best, and there’s no denying Spratt’s overall success. Her association with the champion Stephen McKee-trained sprinter-miler Mufhasa led to no less than eight Group One wins, and another 11 have taken her elite tally to just one short of the target of 20 she set as a career goal.
“Mufhasa was such a good horse, and maybe at the time you don’t fully recognise the significance of what a horse like him achieved,” Spratt said in reflection of the dual New Zealand Horse of the Year. “He’ll always be special to me though, and there have been lots of others too – they’re all special in their own way.”
The well-named Mercurial – stocky, strong and as genuine as they come – is an obvious favourite with Spratt after finishing third on him in the Sistema Railway two weeks earlier and then coming out on top in a rough-house JR & N Berkett Telegraph.
“He’s so competitive and was quite happy to sit outside the leader, then when things got serious he pinned his ears back and just wouldn’t give in. He’s not big but he’s strong and tough, the sort of horse you love riding.”
Sunday’s landmark Ellerslie win on the Marsh-trained Merchant Queen, leading from the start to claim the first race on the new StrathAyr track meant a lot to a jockey who has had such a close association with northern headquarters. This Saturday back at Trentham, Spratt will partner the Lisa Latta-trained Diss Is Dramatic in her quest for Group One win 20 in the Harcourts Thorndon Mile.
“It’s a while since I came up with the target of 20 Group One wins – I can’t explain why it was 20, I guess it sounded like a neat round number and it’s pretty cool to think I’m now so close.”
Before last Saturday, Stephen Marsh didn’t count the Telegraph in his list of feature race wins, but the race is not exactly unfamiliar territory. When his father Bruce was one of the country’s best jockeys in the 1960 and ’70s, he won the Telegraph twice, on the durable gelding Count Kereru in 1972 and two years later on the champion mare Show Gate.
After losing his battle with weight, Marsh senior established himself as one of the best in the training business, initially in New Zealand when he conducted numerous successful sorties to Australia, and for the last decade and a half in Singapore. The 1989 Telegraph was amongst his many successes, saddling up Festal to dead-heat with the great sprinter Mr Tiz.
