• PHOTO: Phillip (Woodheap) Hodgson with trainer Nikki Hodgson and Boho Chick, in the new stables at Coonamble Racecourse just ahead of the 2023 Coonamble Country Championships.
IT’s always been about the horses for Nikki Hodgson.
Born and bred in Coonamble, Nikki is now training horses at Wyong Racecourse where she also manages several boxes for Emeran Park’s pre-training operation.
After gaining her owner/trainer licence in November 2022, Nikki got off to a flying start on 9 December when Boho Chick ran second at Dubbo – much to the excitement of her father Phillip (Woodheap), brothers Michael and Sean and her vast Coonamble-based extended family.
“It was the horses first,” says Nikki. ” I love spending time with them. Obviously the thrill you get when they win races, whether it’s yours or one you work with but definitely the main thing for me is the horse.”
Now 38, Nikki began riding before she can even remember.
“Dad would throw me on a race horse of a morning when he took them for a walk,” she said. “As soon as I was old enough I started riding trackwork.”
“I did enjoy pony club, especially with the sporting, bending races and that type of thing, and the jumping. I just liked riding,” she said.
“When I was really little I wanted to be a jockey, that phase went out fairly early on, following dad around I wanted to be a trainer.”
Before she was even at school, Nikki would go with Woodheap to the races, then back at home she’d get the race video out, grab her whip and ride the back of the couch all the way to the finish line.
While you might not do an apprenticeship to be a thoroughbred trainer, you could say Nikki was both bred for the role and has spent 38 years in preparation for this next phase.
Her grandfather was a stockman and drover and, of his ten children, four were jockeys, with three of them – Cec, Foxy and Frank – also becoming trainers, competing alongside her father.
Woodheap himself started riding trackwork for Johnny Lundholm at the age of 13, riding a pony to the stables after school. “I worked there till I was 21 and got a trainers licence,” he said. “I trained horses then for 40-odd years.”
Woodheap trained horses in Wyong for the last ten years and now plays a two-day-a-week and on-call support role for Nikki.
Her older brother Michael was a “pretty successful amateur rider”, working the picnic races circuit. He then worked on the South Coast before settling at Port Macquarie where he works for racing stewards at meetings up and down the North Coast.
Her younger brother Sean is the manager of the horse pool at the Wyong track.
After a few years riding trackwork for Woodheap and Uncle Cec in Coonamble, Nikki moved to Wyong in early 2003 and rode freelance trackwork for a while.
She even had a stint in Hong Kong, accompanying horses that were broken and started in Wyong to the Breeze Up sale.
The horses would be raced over a couple of furlongs before being put up for auction.
Nikki stayed for about six weeks, riding trackwork at the Happy Valley Racecourse.
“I ended up with a foreman’s job with Rod Bailey in about 2007. He trained at Wyong and I was with him about seven years,” she said.
“I started with the Snowdons in 2014. They are one of the bigger stables in Sydney.
“I was a big Peter Snowdon fan before I went down there. I thought it was a great opportunity to go and work in a bigger stable.
“It was so different in Sydney to anywhere else, the stables are run differently.”
Nikki would travel down from Wyong every day, a trip of 1.5 hours each way.
“I started work at 4am so I’d leave at 2.30 to get there. I’d work from 4am to 9am. Have a break and then go back from 2 to 4.30pm.”
She ended up as a traveling foreperson, accompanying horses to Melbourne, Brisbane, the Gold Coast and even Adelaide.
During that time, some of her charges excelled. “Redzell won two Everests, Capitalist won the Golden Slipper and we trained a fair few Group One winners,” said Nikki.
“You never forget it, even though you’re only playing a small part in it you get a massive buzz.”
After her Sydney stint, Nikki spent about three years working for other trainers before she applied for her licence.
It took 12 months to receive her owner/trainer’s licence and she is now working towards a commercial trainers licence.
“There are a lot of processes you have to go through,” she said.
“You’ve got to have references, you do a course with Team Thoroughbred, it’s a Certificate III in Horse Training, includes horse welfare, the business side, you go through everything you need to know.”
In some ways it’s a different world to when Phillip trained in Coonamble.
“Going back a few years there were 31 registered horse trainers in Coonamble and now I think there’s three,” said Woodheap.
“Working the horse side of things is the same, she’s done what I’ve done for 20 years, but the feed side of things now is a lot different.
“Back in my day you used to have to mix all your own feeds. You’d get a bag of lupins or chickpeas from a cockie around the corner and you’d crack it, add corn and oats and chaff, where now most of those feeds are pre mixed feeds.”
He says Nikki “learnt a lot when she went to the Snowdons as far as the medical side of things.”
“When I was here we were our own vets because there was no vet so you had to have a bit of knowledge, do horses teeth, drench horses.
“Unless you had a really crook horse – if you had a really bad one you had to take it to Dubbo of course whereas down there there’s a vet at the track every morning and if something happens you just wave him in.
“Otherwise, basically it’s still the same.”
In recent years, finding track riders in places like Coonamble has become a major challenge, with most trainers having to ride all their own horses.
Fortunately trackriders are still easy enough to find in Wyong.
Nikki now has three horses in her stable, having just added Skybeam, a four-year-old gelding who is still a couple of weeks away from his first start.
Soon after Boho Chick (a 5 year-old she bought for $2000) had her great run in Dubbo, Girls Night In (a 4-year-old bought for $2500) won on her first start at Port Macquarie.
Between them the two had run seven races, won three and run a second, a third and a fourth.
“So she’s on the mark,” said Woodheap. “But she’s got a long way to go yet.
“If she can get the quality horses I’m sure she’ll be successful enough. That’ll come.”
There’s not much time to spare for the up and coming trainer.
“It’s hard to have another hobby, you don’t really get time,” said Nikki. “My downtime is spending time with family.”
“I love spending time with the horses and I’ve never really wanted to do anything else.”
She says there are as many female trainers as there are male working out of the Wyong stables.
“You all compete together,” she said. “These days if you’re good enough it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female. If you’re good enough you get the opportunities.”
While it’s about finding the right horse for the right money, Nikki says twenty would not be a bad numberto aim for.
“You can still be hands on, and it’s better to do it that way,” she said. “If I got to that point I’d be happy.”
And of course she has her support crew – Phillip, Michael and Sean – behind her and her Hodgson family cheer squad at home in Coonamble.
“The phone runs hot when the horses are going good,” said Nikki. “I think they’re all enjoying it. They all know a bit about what’s involved.”