Mick On Monday: Pike pair could be two new stars of the saddle

Drop Of Something's win in the Te Awamutu Cup completed a Te Rapa treble for Yuga Okuba. Credit: Kenton Wright.

Cambridge trainer Tony Pike thinks he has a stable full of talented youngsters and two of them are human.

 Because while his best horses won’t be seen on the racetrack until the spring Pike’s two stable apprentices were both starring in the winter wet over the weekend.

 Pike has both Japanese apprentice Yuga Okubo and Sam McNab indentured to him and thinks both will make an impression beyond being 4kgs claimers.

 Okubo won three races from four rides at Te Rapa on Saturday while he and McNab quinellaed the R65 at Tauranga yesterday, McNab winning on Macallan.

 The pair may come from vastly different back rounds but Pike says they can both ride.

 “Yuga rode a handful of winners in Japan but was riding on the very tough JRA circuit against some outstanding riders,” Pike explains.

 “He obviously had to learn about New Zealand racing and some of our racing language when he got here but he can ride, as you saw on Saturday.

 “Now people have seen what he can do I think he will be popular and the winners will start to flow as he is way better than a 4kg claimer.”

 So too is McNab, the younger brother of champion jockey Michael McNab, who while he is only getting started looks to have the family ability.

 “You can see he has molded his style at least a bit on Nabba [Michael McNab] and he rides very well, almost too well for some of these winter tracks.


“They are both good young men too who want to work and make a real go of it so while I am stoked to have them working here there will be plenty of other trainers chasing them through the winter.

 “I think they will both end up way better than just winter claiming apprentices and can keep making an impression when the jockey’s room fills up a bit more in the spring.”

While the senior jockey’s ranks could be the strongest they have been in a decade next season the apprentice ranks are also far deeper than usual.

 The Pike pair are joining a list headed by Lily Sutherland then Triston Moodley (52 wins for the season), with Ace-Lawson Carroll, Amber Riddell, Rihaan Goyaram all having huge seasons while Hayley Hassman is really starting to make a name for herself.

“I think the apprentice ranks are the strongest they have been for a long time, with some good talent coming through,” says Pike.

 Pike says it isn’t just his apprentices he rates as he is looking forward to unleashing plenty of equine talent too when the weather improves.

 “Obviously we had some really nice two-year-olds this season who you would expect to go on with it next term,” says Pike.

 “Lucy In The Sky is already a stakes winner while Cream Tart won her second start by over seven lengths and she could be in for a big spring and that is just a couple of them.

 “We also have 28 yearlings who will be turning two next month and that gives us a lot to work with.

 “So it is pretty exciting to have so many good youngsters, both horses and people, around the stable at the moment.”

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.