Horse racing: Champion jockey’s shattering spring news after horse kick

Michael McNab said it was "heartbreaking" after he was kicked in the leg on Tuesday, fracturing it. Photo / Trish Dunell

Premiership-leading jockey Michael McNab is set to miss the majority of the spring racing schedule after fracturing his leg at the Ellerslie trials on Tuesday.

McNab was kicked in the leg by a 2-year-old he was about to ride in a trial, the accident happening in the parade ring.

“It got me below the knee and it stung, had me sweating,” McNab said.

He was taken to Auckland Hospital where X-rays showed a fracture to the bone below the knee.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said McNab, who was hoping to be able to head home to Cambridge last night.

“I think I am looking at at least six to eight weeks out of the saddle but I won’t really know until I see the surgeon.”

McNab leads the national premiership by six wins, with 17 victories for the season, and is the regular rider of perennial Group 1 contender La Crique, who is set to race next in the Howden Mile at Te Rapa on September 27. She will now almost certainly need a new jockey for that race, and the Group 1 Livamol at Ellerslie on October 18.

McNab would have been in hot demand for many of the leading chances in a range of black-type races over the spring and a best-case scenario, with the timeframe he was thinking of tonight, would be a return for just before New Zealand Cup week, which hosts the 1000 and 2000 Guineas.

It is McNab’s second major injury in the last 18 months after a back injury suffered in a Te Rapa race in 2024 cost him his chance of defending the New Zealand jockey’s premiership he had won the previous two seasons.

McNab was the favourite to win that premiership again this season until Tuesday’s accident, with TAB bookies quickly closing the premiership market.

He can, of course, still win the premiership but is now going to miss possibly the next two months and lost momentum, future rides and possbly enormous income.

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.