Have a little Patience: Take The Miki takes the win - 1210 days after its last race
Jonny Turner • November 28th, 2025 9:48 AM • 4 min read
Take The Miki did what could be considered unthinkable after more than three years away from the races.
In a stunning performance under master trainer Warren Stapleton, the pacer made the best possible comeback from a lengthy injury-enforced layoff when running to a strong victory at Oamaru on Thursday.
In winning, Take The Miki joined a long list of horses that have been rehabilitated and had their racing careers resurrected under Stapleton’s guidance.
Though he had done it so many times before, the Rakaia trainer admitted he still gets a kick out of guiding a promising horse back to the winner’s circle.
“You would have to be pleased to see him come back and win like that,” Stapleton said. “Especially for the owners, they have been in it for the long haul with him...And it has been a long, drawn-out affair.”
Raced by John and Terese Screen and Devon and Libby Screen, Take The Miki showed promise as a three-year-old in 2022, before he was sent to Sydney.
There, the pacer sustained a leg injury which would eventually see him join the Stapleton barn. Stapleton has applied his well-known leg treatments which have saved the careers of dozens of horses over a lengthy training career.
Though it was far from a case of slapping on a bit of leg paint and strapping Take The Miki into the sulky.
“He has been in and out three or four times.”
“I nearly had him going when I first got him, just about ready to go to the trials and his leg blew up.”
“So I turned him out and mucked around with him.”
“The original problem was just above his fetlock and we were going pretty good and then a different part of the tendon flared up.”
“It felt like I was chasing the injury around his leg.”
“But we kept working on him and had him on the jogger and eventually in the cart.”
Many horses are expected to improve dramatically when they start fresh up off a break of only a couple of months. Going by the same scale, Take The Miki should be a powerful force with the benefit he will take from his returning win.
But as he approaches his 50th year of training winners, Stapleton knows to keep his feet firmly on the ground.
“It is hard to say exactly where we are at with him, he will certainly improve a lot.”
“We haven’t screwed him down at all, it has just been a quiet preparation and we haven’t turned the key at all.”
“If he holds together you’d expect he would do a pretty good job...We have had his leg scanned and it is good at the moment.”
“But he is a big, heavy horse and it will be a matter of how he stands up to the racing.”
With a strong early tempo, Stapleton was a little concerned that Take The Miki’s fitness would be put to the test in his Oamaru return.
However as the race turned out, it was the six-year-old who put his rivals under pressure when he ran away to score for driver Leo O’Reilly.
