Interview with 20-year-old from a famous Yorkshire racing family seeking to build her fledgling career across the pond
It was probably odds-on Mia Nicholls would become a jockey. But if there is one absolute certainty about the Yorkshire apprentice's fledgling riding career, it is how smitten she is with her new life Stateside.
The 20-year-old’s late grandfather David ‘Dandy’ Nicholls rode more than 400 winners during his time in the saddle before forging a fine reputation for himself as a G1-winning trainer, while her father Adrian rode many of the stable’s key performers and now trains in his own right in North Yorkshire.
“Being a jockey was always what I kind of wanted to do,” she says, speaking as she makes her way to Gulfstream Park for a ride following her switch to the States at the end of last year.
“There was a time when I was competing at gymnastics and it came to a point when I had to decide, but I was always leaning towards horses.
“I was probably too young to remember some of Grandad’s big winners, but I do remember going to the yard after school to help feed the horses or lunge them and then I’d go racing with Dad and see him ride winners. I’d see him have a photograph after a race and that’s where I wanted to be.”
Nicholls got her chance to follow in the family footsteps when she had her first ride in September 2022 and her breakthrough winner came the subsequent January on Bascinet at Chelmsford.
Another 17 followed in what was a productive first full season as an apprentice, which went on to include an educational stint in Florida with G1-winning trainer Jerry O'Dwyer – a contemporary of her father’s.
“I came on an ESTA visa at the end of 2023 for three months into 2024,” Nicholls explains. “I didn’t race-ride, just breezed horses at the track at Palm Meadows, but I loved it. I found it really hard to go back to England and that was a big indicator that I enjoyed it here – and that was even without riding in races.”
Likeable and engaging
Back in her homeland for 2024, the likeable and engaging youngster was responsible for adding another ten victories to her CV, but the desire to cross the Atlantic again was burning strongly.
“When I went back to England, I wasn’t myself, but I’m happy here,” she says. “The lifestyle is really chilled, everyone is welcoming, although the horses initially were quite difficult. They’re bigger built and stronger to hold, but I knew when I first came out that I’d be back – and now I’m staying.
“Last year was more difficult than my first year at home, when I rode 18 winners,” she explains. “It was slow to get going. I had Dad helping me and we had Tees Spirit, who ran in Listed and Group races in France and Ireland, and was the main horse to keep me going, but it wasn’t the same as that first season.
“I was unhappy and actually left for America earlier than I originally planned.”
O’Dwyer’s Sweet Judy Blue was her first mount in the US in a claiming race at Gulfstream Park in November and stable companion Princess Cairo got her off the mark at the venue when she struck in February.
“I still think I would have come back even if I’d ridden more winners at home last year,” Nicholls continues. “It was always in the back of my mind, although the original plan was just to do the winter again – I wasn’t meant to stay – but my paperwork was sorted, I had a handful of rides, and I went, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna stay’.
“And the day Princess Cairo won was brilliant,” she goes on. “It was even better for me to win for Jerry. I came over for him and he looked after me; he was the person I wanted my first winner for.”
Nuances of the sport
Nicholls is now based with Saffie Joseph (right), the leading trainer at Gulfstream Park who scooped the Pegasus World Cup with White Abarrio in January. She also has an agent in Bryce Soth and has quickly got to grips with nuances of the sport in her new home.
“They use the clock and time things a lot over here and I think that helped me when I was back in England from that first stint,” she says.
“When I told a lot of the senior jockeys I was going out initially, they said they wished, if they could do it all again, they’d have come out and given it a go.
“We also get ponied everywhere, which was hard to get my head around at the start,” she goes on. “You warm up with the pony and then get handed to the stalls team, and the ponies stand in the stalls with you, so you’re never really alone unless you’ve been told by a trainer to go away from them.
“With the pony, there’s less chance of anything going wrong, which is really beneficial.”
Typically, Nicholls may race-ride twice a week and starts exercising horses at 5am at the training centre at Palm Meadows, which is where she lives and sees first hand some of the differences between America and Britain.
No time to mess around
“They’re a lot quicker at getting us in the gates here,” she explains. “I know back home the fields are bigger, but you’re never in the gates long over here, so horses don’t have time to mess around.
“At the track in the morning they do a lot of stalls work. They stand them in and back them out; they make sure it’s down to a tee before the races, which makes things much smoother.”
Riding on dirt has been a somewhat less pleasant culture shock to Nicholls, who admits: “If you’re in behind, but not really close to the horses in front, the kickback is horrendous. There’s kickback at home, but when I first rode on the dirt they gave me four pairs of goggles and I said, ‘Surely I’m not going to need all of these?’ But I did!”
A keen gym goer, the 7lb apprentice hopes to pick up more mounts at Gulfstream now the championship meeting has ended and senior riders have moved on, while she has also discussed with Soth and Joseph the possibility of increasing her presence in the mornings at the track, which, at the moment, is limited to Sundays.
Monday afternoons, however, are reserved for something else, as she explains. “Most mornings we’ll be done for 8.30am,” she says. “So every week a load of us go and play volleyball at Delray Beach, which beats driving to Newcastle or Wolverhampton for a ride in the 8.30 back home!”
Nicholls says the locals have been very accommodating to the expat British newcomer. “All the jockeys here have been very welcoming and friendly,” she says.
“I have my own weighing room and valet, so I don’t have to go into their weighing room, but my Spanish isn’t great, so I’m learning. I don’t need to learn it because people here can speak good English, but I just feel if they can speak to me in English I should be able to speak to them in Spanish. I have a few friends who are fluent and are trying to help me, but I’ll probably look to have lessons too.”
Opportunities and lifestyle
That slight language barrier and lack of female colleagues in the Gulfstream Park weighing room might explain why Nicholls misses the banter of back home, but the opportunities and lifestyle are not the only positives she has discovered since relocating to Florida.
“Oh, financially it’s really good,” she adds. “Most of the barns here have great week-to-week pay and the purses are brilliant; I was in a race the other day and my horse ended up scratching, but it was worth $97,000 and wasn’t even a stakes race.”
Riding out her claim, building contacts and, in time, making a splash on a bigger stage are the aims for the down-to-earth, yet ambitious Nicholls, who does not mind the extra attention that comes along with being a female jockey – “they do fuss over me a bit and wish me luck, which is nice.”
There seem to be zero hints of homesickness. “I have no intention of going home – I’ve fallen in love with it here,” she declares.
“My parents are delighted. They said whatever I wanted to do, I could, and they could see I wasn’t happy back home and it wasn’t going how I wanted. They told me to come out, give it my best and, if I didn’t like it, I was only a flight away from home.”
Do not expect Nicholls to be making that flight anytime soon given how much she has enjoyed the last few months.
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