Marburg Chasing UDC Gold

By Darren Clayton

One of four new syndicates taking to the track in the 2026 Ladbrokes Ultimate Drivers Championship, Marburg Gold was formed by the Marburg Pacing Association (MPA).

The MPA are responsible for harness racing at Marburg, a rural locality approximately 50km to the west of Brisbane, with the small, dedicated committee constantly looking for and executing innovative ideas to boost both the club and the sport.

Hot on the heels of ideating, promoting, and delivering the enormous success of Queensland’s first all-trot race meeting, the MPA did not sit idle awaiting their next project.

Club President Shaun Gillespie hatched the idea to apply for a slot in the UDC and after putting to the committee, the paperwork was lodged to hopefully be granted one of the 10 available.

Alex Cain will form part of the Marburg Gold Syndicate, and in her dual role as treasurer and media for the MPA, has played a key role behind the scenes as the series approaches.

“Shaun came up with the concept and decided that it would be a great idea for the club and we agreed,” Cain said.

“He said, ‘we’ll put our foot forward and see if we can get a slot, and if we can get one, we’ll try and get some people together.’

“We were successful, so then we went from there with offering people to have a chance to go in the slot and we were pretty lucky that most people were pretty keen to get on board.”

With the slot quickly filled by a mix of locals that already had established relationships with the MPA and trainers, drivers and owners, the next decision was to pick their driver.

Marburg may only be a small club in a small rural town, but trusting the idiom that ‘size doesn’t matter,’ they were keen to strike a deal with the biggest name in Australian harness racing.

“Shaun was really keen to get Luke McCarthy, obviously, Luke being as big in harness racing as he is,” Cain said.

“Luke’s pretty much the best in the business and the game plan was to get someone who not only was a big name but has a lot of success.

“With his driving and getting all the group ones next to his name, I think there’s pretty much not many races, if any, that Luke hasn’t won.”

That is a statement backed by the statistics.

McCarthy has driven more Group 1 pacing winners in Australia than any other driver, and excluding Gary Hall Jnr and James MacDonald, has more wins at the elite level than the remaining UDC drivers combined.

No other driver in the UDC has ever recorded a season that has produced a winning strike-rate of 30%, yet McCarthy can boast three of them.

Striking at 30% in 2010/11 and 2012/13 when producing 108 and 154 winners respectively, Cool Hand Luke hit a career high 33% in 2019/20 in a term where he drove 247 winners.

The big stage is where McCarthy has etched his name in gold, winning 11 metropolitan driving premierships, six in Queensland and five in New South Wales.

On 13 occasions he has driven five or more winners at a single meeting, 11 of those at a metropolitan fixture, while his Grand Circuit honour roll includes wins in every race bar the two Western Australian events of the Fremantle and WA Pacing Cups.

With wins in the first two editions of the Eureka, the Inter Dominion, New Zealand Cup, Victoria Cup, Hunter Cup, even a World Trotting Derby with Muscle Hill, it is Albion Park that still holds a special place in McCarthy’s heart.

“He’s got an amazing Albion Park record and obviously he is very comfortable driving around that track no matter what horse he sits behind.

“He generally can lift them and get them to go.”

Just like the commodities markets, the syndicate have their faith pinned on Cool Hand Luke to be the catalyst for stocks in Marburg Gold to explode.