{"id":243509,"date":"2025-07-06T20:21:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T20:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/243509\/"},"modified":"2025-07-06T20:21:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T20:21:12","slug":"mick-on-monday-pike-pair-could-be-two-new-stars-of-the-saddle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/243509\/","title":{"rendered":"Mick On Monday: Pike pair could be two new stars of the saddle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u201cYuga rode a handful of winners in Japan but was riding on the very tough JRA circuit against some outstanding riders,\u201d Pike explains.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cHe 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cNow 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u00a0So too is McNab, the younger brother of champion jockey Michael McNab, who while he is only getting started looks to have the family ability.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cYou 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.\u2028<\/p>\n

\u201cThey 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI think they will both end up way better than just winter claiming apprentices and can keep making an impression when the jockey\u2019s room fills up a bit more in the spring.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the senior jockey\u2019s ranks could be the strongest they have been in a decade next season the apprentice ranks are also far deeper than usual.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the apprentice ranks are the strongest they have been for a long time, with some good talent coming through,\u201d says Pike.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Pike says it isn\u2019t just his apprentices he rates as he is looking forward to unleashing plenty of equine talent too when the weather improves.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cObviously we had some really nice two-year-olds this season who you would expect to go on with it next term,\u201d says Pike.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cLucy 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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u201cWe also have 28 yearlings who will be turning two next month and that gives us a lot to work with.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cSo it is pretty exciting to have so many good youngsters, both horses and people, around the stable at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world\u2019s biggest horse racing carnivals.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0\u201cYuga rode a handful of winners in Japan but was riding on the very tough JRA circuit against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[25029,276,14381,35324,51066,21021,1327,9641,3577,254,94608,21014,1071,94609,79,93740,5636,94610,5598,7767,67887,78204,32568,12451,16,15,94611],"class_list":{"0":"post-243509","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-be","9":"tag-cambridge","10":"tag-could","11":"tag-full","12":"tag-human","13":"tag-mick","14":"tag-monday","15":"tag-new","16":"tag-of","17":"tag-on","18":"tag-pair","19":"tag-pike","20":"tag-racing","21":"tag-saddle","22":"tag-sports","23":"tag-stable","24":"tag-stars","25":"tag-talented","26":"tag-the","27":"tag-them","28":"tag-thinks","29":"tag-tony","30":"tag-trainer","31":"tag-two","32":"tag-uk","33":"tag-united-kingdom","34":"tag-youngsters"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114808152674248720","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}