Notabadspillane is New Zealand Cup-bound after his big win at Te Rapa on Saturday. Photo / Kenton Wright
Elen Nicholas is the comeback story of the racing season that is so good, the TAB bookies couldn’t ignore it any more.
The 29-year-old jockey who broke her leg twice in racing accidents in the last two years sits second-equal on the premiership standings, alongside none other than Opie Bosson, after a winner at Waverley on Sunday took her to 16 victories for the season.
Considering premiership leader Michael McNab is himself sidelined with a leg fracture, Nicholas and Bosson are New Zealand’s two leading active jockeys at the moment.
That is a sentence nobody thought they would ever read and one that makes the popular Cambridge jockey laugh.
So unheralded was Nicholas at the start of the season, she wasn’t even quoted in the market to win the national jockey’s premiership and the TAB bookies only added her on Saturday.
Few could blame their oversight however as after a series of race falls and broken bones, even Nicholas and partner, trainer Shaun Phelan, doubted she would make it back to the race-day saddle.
“We had arguments over it, whether I should even try to come back,” Nicholas said.
“I wasn’t sure either, especially after breaking my leg for a second time at Hastings.
“I got a hairline fracture in a race fall at Wingatui but thought that wasn’t a big enough deal to force me into retirement – but the next fall at Hastings was way worse.”
When a jockey as under-rated as Nicholas rockets up the premiership so quickly, there is usually a reason, like a 4kg claimer getting widely used in winter, a jockey enjoying a new association with a major stable or an overseas star like Warren Kennedy moving to New Zealand.
That hasn’t been the case for Nicholas, whose ascension this season is as much though willpower as horsepower.
While she has a strike rate under 5, meaning she rides a winner better than every five rides, many of her 16 victories have been at double-figure prices.
“It has been unbelievable,” Nicholas said of her sit-up-and-take-notice season.
“It is kinda nice I am getting so many rides for smaller stables but hopefully they will also lead to more rides for bigger stables.
“Andrew Forsman is one of the bigger trainers who puts me on sometimes, but I really appreciate all the support I get.”
Nicholas’s win yesterday came on Grecia Girl, a pick-up ride after premiership winner Craig Grylls couldn’t make the Waverley meeting because of transport issues, but her Te Rapa winner on Saturday is a horse she knows a lot better.
Notabadspillane was backed in from $17 to start $3.90 favourite and smashed his rivals in the Rating 75 over 2100m, putting him on a New Zealand Cup campaign.
The half-brother to two-time Oaks winner Pennyweka was chosen by Phelan and Nicholas at the yearling sales and is a stable favourite.
“And my father has a share in him as well so what he is doing means a lot to us,” Nicholas said.
Notabadspillane is now equal-second-favourite for the New Zealand Cup at Riccarton on November 15 and if he makes it there in Saturday’s form, he will give Nicholas the chance to take another major step in her career.
Her 106 career wins have yet to include a black-type win, in part due to the fact she has ridden in so few black-type races, which comes back again to not being a regular jockey for any of the major stables.
There is still plenty of room for punters wanting to jump on the Nicholas bandwagon now, as even though the TAB now has her listed in the market, she is still paying $41 for what would be the most unlikely premiership win since Leicester City in the English Premier League in 2016 at 5000-1.
But at least Leicester were in the market at the start of their season.
Nicholas had to ride 15 winners in two months just to get that far.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.