It is a team that spans the ages. Octogenarian horseman Murray Pash and his juvenile pacer Sargent Henry stole the show at the Nelson Harness Racing Club trials on Sunday.
And it is Murray calling the shots after training horses for more than 50 years and still driving them at the trials.
The pair made no race of its heat at the weekend, leading throughout to donkey-lick the opposition as Murray gets the two-year-old ready for the West Coast Christmas circuit and the following Nelson two-day meeting.
“I sent him to race at Addington and Timaru to gain experience, but he didn’t eat well on the trip. However, since he’s come home, he has started to blossom. Time is on his side,” enthuses Murray.
“Any horse still gets me excited. I am usually out of bed at 5.15am and come to the Richmond track to work them.”
It helps that he lives close by at Waimea Village. He is president at Club Waimea and has six of his mates from there involved in racing Sargent Henry.
The best horse he has trained was Eastburn Gee which won four of her last six races in 2007 before breaking a bone in her foot.“And I sold two-year-old Macraider to Australia, for the owners, for $110,000 after just two starts. People said you would never get over 100k for a horse from Nelson,” says the 80-year-old owner-trainer.
Just a couple of hours after his Sunday success, a horse he formerly trained to win, Archie, won at big odds at Rangiora. There were 15 horses in action at trials with the numbers bolstered by visiting trainers from Blenheim and Westport.
