Merv losing plenty of sleep over upcoming Victoria Derby - NZ Trotting Cup double

Merv Butterworth admits he’s not sleeping the best.

Even for one of Australasia’s biggest racehorse owners, the stakes just got pretty big.

Never mind that Butterworth and his wife Meg have star pacer Copy That and crack trotter Sacred Mountain attempting to win from huge handicaps at Cambridge tonight. In the next 11 days they will have favourites running in two of the biggest races on the calendar in both the thoroughbred and harness codes.

Tomorrow, in the Butterworths’ home town of Melbourne, new-star-on-the-block Sharp ’N’ Smart will start top fancy at Flemington in the A$2 million Victoria Derby, the country’s most prized three-year-old crown that has been contested since 1855.

And just 10 days later they have current co-favourite Copy That attempting to win New Zealand’s most prestigeous harness race for Lincoln Farms, the $600,000 New Zealand Trotting Cup, for the second year on end.

“I doubt this double’s ever been done before,” says Butterworth. “The more you think about it, the more sleep you lose. And now it’s interrupting my days as well as the nights.”

Attending early morning trackwork at Flemington on Thursday did little to settle the nerves either, hearing champion jockey James McDonald climb off Sharp ’N’ Smart and say: ‘Wow, what a horse’.

The derby will be JMac’s first raceday spin on the horse but effervescent trainer Graeme Rogerson has filled him with plenty of confidence.

“Rogey says the horse is perfect and has improved from his last run. He reckons the only thing that could beat us is a super heavy track.”

Butterworth has enjoyed more than 1000 wins as an owner but none of them have had a bankroll of A$1.57 million after just seven starts, the A$2 million Spring Champion Stakes his latest scalp.

And to think he and Meg could have had a 25% share in the gelding, rather than 12.5% along with his five partners.

“I told Rogey, no, 12.5% was enough.”

Butterworth has said no to Rogey plenty of times since he met the man who could sell a smoke-blowing VW to an Arab oil sheikh.

“I was sitting in the lounge at Addington on Show Day in 2015 when I saw him sitting by himself. I’d never met him but I knew who he was and said: ’Oi, come and join us.

“I bought him a lemon, lime and bitters, we started talking, and …”

You know what’s coming next, Butterworth, flush from Arden Rooney’s win in the $765,000 New Zealand Trotting Cup three days earlier, was on Rogey’s owners’ list.

Not all the horses Butterworth said ‘yes’ to in the interim have hit the headlines but his interest was kept intact when flashy galloper Mascarpone took our the $220,000 Otaki Weight-For-Age Classic in February, only to go amiss.

Butterworth has the six inch high Maori carving trophy from the Otaki feature on his mantelpiece at home but is hoping to replace it with a more lavish one on Saturday.

Winning the derby would be some feat by the Redwood gelding who cost just $55,000 as a yearling and wasn’t wanted at the two-year-old ready-to-run sale, failing to reach his $90,000 reserve.

But Rogerson has won the derby before, in 2006 with Efficient who went on to win the Melbourne Cup the following year.

Sharp ‘N’ Smart races at 6.20pm NZ time at Flemington on Saturday.