Michelle Nihei (pronounced knee-hay) was the opposite of my preconception of her when we met recently. As a female exercise rider turned trainer in a largely male-dominated profession, I expected someone probably noisy, ballsy, tough. She is in fact softly spoken, thoughtful, and tough, still more the neuroscientist she was in a past life than the racehorse trainer she has been for the last 13 years.
Originally, I thought I would write a piece about a medium-size stable in the U.S., how the economics were, the rise of the supertrainers, and the seeming relative paucity of female trainers in the U.S. compared to other nations.
When Nihei showed me the facilities she and husband Troy Levy are developing at his Circle 8 Ranch and Training Center (a wholly owned subsidiary of Tropical Racing), just off Versailles Way outside Lexington, Kentucky, all that changed.
Nihei houses a string at Palm Meadows in Florida year-round. From spring through autumn, she has stalls at Keeneland and houses more horses at Circle 8.
They say Newmarket exists perhaps because of Warren Hill. It was just the right length, the right steepness, the right turf, to train young Thoroughbred racehorses on, so the stables grew up around that hill, and the blacksmiths set up their forges there, and the feed men and the merchants, and the homes for all the people followed.
Circle 8 is just a field, formerly used for grazing broodmares on the 200-acre farm. It would have been overlooked by many, I suspect. But people with high IQs - and Nihei’s puts her firmly in the rocket scientist category - can come at things from more angles. Their minds see possibilities others miss.
Michelle Nihei, ex-event rider, looked at that field on the farm and thought Equine Circuit Training.
It is just the right size, just the right contours, just the right hills. She marked out a circuit one mile round. After a ¾-mile warm-up walk followed by a mile jogging, the gallop begins, slightly uphill, then turns right to a steeper hill. Then it’s gallop some more, then a left-hand turn, down a hill, then up a steep hill and turn left, gallop some more, then a slightly downhill right-hand turn and that is a one-mile circuit completed.
Perform three times then, after that three-mile gallop, walk another ¾ mile home, five minutes on the horse walker, bathe, then let them pick grass quietly for 20 minutes.
Relaxing, no rushing, giving these young horses a chance to work it all out, making them more aware, more amenable, listening to their riders under the tutelage of Nihei’s right-hand person and rider in Kentucky, Mimi Davis.
The horses, after their loping gallop of three miles, walk home calm, happy, relaxed, no eyes popping here as they come off the track.
“It’s proving to be successful. The horses are all running first, second, third, in Maiden Special Weights,” says Nihei. (Her only runner while I was working on the piece won its Maiden Special Weight at Churchill Downs.)
“Joe Pickerrell in Ocala breaks them for us, and does an amazing job,” she says. “I like them to know about the racetrack so when we get them they go to the track for a while, but when they come here it adds a whole other dimension to their stability, their balance and their soundness.
“When they go back to the racetrack after a couple of months, everyone who has ridden them both before and after says it is remarkable how much stronger they are and how much better they takes the turns because now they know how to lift that shoulder instead of just flattening around the turn.”
A recently completed woodchip with a steep straight 2-furlong uphill finish, and a 6-furlong left-handed reseeded turf course, which may be converted to a Tapeta training oval, complement the figure-eight turf circuit training course.
“We are taking it one step at a time, but I really want to make this into a hallmark type of place,” she says. “it is a bit financially stressful, but we want to train our horses here. I was lucky enough to spend some time riding for Sir Michael Stoute in Newmarket and that formed the basis of a lot of the ideology of what we are doing here.”
Michelle Nihei was born in Calgary in Western Canada to a scientist father and a lawyer mother. Both her parents sadly passed away, and I wonder if those events played some part in her decision to walk away from her job as a neuroscientist.
She says it took her 12 years to realize she wanted to ride horses for a living. “You only have one life to live,” she says. “I just loved horses. I always wanted to be around them.”
Nihei ended up becoming an exercise rider and then assistant to Todd Pletcher.
“It was an amazing fantastic experience. Everything I know about breezing horses I learnt from Angel Cordero and Johnny Velasquez. I was getting on ten a day sometimes. It was the best education you could get.
“I had ridden all ways - eventing, quarter horses, all sorts, but Thoroughbreds are different, they are like different animals.”
She galloped some of the barn’s best horses - English Channel, Scat Daddy, Lawyer Ron, Pollards Vision, Ashado and many other top-flight Thoroughbreds - before a horse rearing over on her caused a serious injury to her knee, occasioning one surgeon to suggest amputation was an option.
The accident happened the year G1 winner Prince Will I Am was born (2007), and Nihei was there working on that farm rehabilitating, when he was a baby. From there, she decided to branch out on her own and took out her trainer’s license.
‘The biggest jerk’
A client, Mrs Susan Atkins (Casa Farms), asked her who was the best of those babies on that farm. Nihei pointed at ‘Prince’ and said, “He’s the biggest jerk, but he will also be the best racehorse.”
So, as a 2-year-old, Nihei and the jerk were reunited in her fledging training barn in Florida.
Prince Will I Am made Nihei a G1 winning trainer in only her third season training after the trainer switched the horse to turf and ran him in the Jamaica Handicap at Belmont Park.
He went on to finish second in the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Marathon, but, when the stewards deemed his rider had caused interference on the turn, he was demoted, a tough pill to swallow.
From limited opportunities, Nihei is a multiple Graded stakes-winning trainer. “When you have experienced success at that level, you just always want to experience it again,” she says.
“As a trainer, I want to try and do the impossible. I want to try and work with a select string of quality horses. I love route horses. I have clients who let us do the right thing, and we can do the right thing with our facilities.”
Michelle Nihei’s jerk became her Prince Charming. They are still together. He is the chestnut in the picture at the top of this article.
If horses could talk, and they do if you listen, they would all be saying they want to train here.