Nicky Pearson

Article by Chris Pitt

Horseracing is strewn with the names of apprentice jockeys who were highly successful while able to use their 7lb, 5lb or 3lb allowance but swiftly faded into obscurity once their claim was lost. Some remain as distant memories, others are long forgotten.

One such aspirant was Nicky Pearson, who, over the course of two seasons, 1956 and 1957, established himself as something of a big race specialist but then disappeared virtually without trace.

Nicky Pearson was born in Newcastle in September 1938. He rode his first winner at Windsor on Saturday, November 5, 1955 on a 25-1 outsider named Pencross in a 39 runner two-year-old seller, winning by a length, with top jockeys Manny Mercer, Doug Smith, Bill Rickaby and Willie Snaith his nearest pursuers. It was his only winner that season from 12 rides, but the Bonfire Night victory of Pencross was the precursor to two years of fireworks.

Despite his relative inexperience, he was entrusted with a ride in the 41 runner Lincolnshire Handicap in 1956, finishing unplaced on long-shot Zip Goes a Million. It was mid-May before he opened his account for the season, aboard Novachev in a Warwick apprentices’ race, but he improved tremendously throughout the summer, gaining his first important success on White Heather for his ‘guvnor’ Sam Armstrong in the Rosebery Memorial Handicap at Epsom’s Derby Meeting.

In July he rode a double at Birmingham, then he kicked off August by winning the Goodwood Stakes on the Bill Marshall-trained Terrington. September brought victory in the Champion Apprentice Handicap at Carlisle on Double Light, while October’s highlights included wins in York’s Rockingham Handicap on Landing Quarter and the Stockton Stewards’ Handicap on Carnival Gem. He rounded off the campaign by winning the Midland Cesarewitch at Birmingham on George Todd’s Closebeck on November 5, the anniversary of his first winner.

He finished the 1956 season with 21 winners from 237 rides, which placed him joint fifth in the apprentices’ table behind Edward Hide, Geoff Lewis, Tony Rawlinson and Paul Tulk. Sam Armstrong said of Pearson “he will continue to do well”.

He began 1957 with success on Rum Fun at Warwick on March 30, and came close on the biggest stage of all, Royal Ascot, when finishing second on Closebeck in the Ascot Stakes.

While his number of winners fell to just 11 from 124 rides that year, they included several valuable handicaps, including Haydock’s Tote Investors’ Cup on Armstrong’s No Comment, Carlisle’s Cumberland Plate, the Lanark Silver Bell and Edinburgh’s Royal Caledonian Hunt Cup, all on Cannebierre, the Brighton Cup on George Todd’s Double Red, and the Ayrshire Handicap on the William Bellerby-trained Tao.

Two more wins followed that Ayr success, Charlie Proper at Hamilton Park on September 23, and Sam Armstrong’s Dismiss at Pontefract two days later. His final ride that season was on No Comment, unplaced behind Stephanotis in the Cambridgeshire. Nobody could have predicted that those Hamilton and Pontefract winners would be the last he would ever ride in Britain, nor that so little would be heard of him again.

That winter he journeyed east to ride in Calcutta but that, it seems, was a turning point in his career for all the wrong reasons. An archaic rule then in force stipulated that once an apprentice had ridden over jumps or had ridden abroad, he automatically lost the right to claim an allowance on the Flat. Devoid of that valuable claim, which by then had been reduced to 3lb, meant he was always likely to struggle when pitched in on equal terms against the senior jockeys. Over the next two years he had hardly any rides and no winners and did not renew his licence in 1960.

That could have been the last anyone saw of him but, surprisingly, Nicky Pearson reappeared as a jumps jockey in the 1962/63 season. It was not a success. The only horse of any quality he rode was Charlie Bell’s chaser Bridge Of Orchy and he either fell or unseated on three of the four occasions Pearson rode him, the final time being at Carlisle on Easter Saturday.

Pearson also held a licence for the 1963/64 season but again had few rides, with Painted Warrior giving him a first flight fall at Ayr. He resumed riding on the Flat in 1964 and had a handful of rides for Ferryhill, Co. Durham trainer David ‘Taffy’ Williams, the last being when ignominiously left at the start on Miss Privet at Catterick on June 6.

He renewed his jumps licence for the 1965/66 campaign but, once again, rides were few and far between, although he did have two in one day at Sedgefield on January 29, 1966. Both failed to complete, Wotyafink being pulled up in a novice chase and Carle’s Girl falling in a novice hurdle. His last ride that season was when finishing third on Princely Portion in a two-mile handicap hurdle at Hexham on May 30, 1966.

The final entry for Nicky Pearson is in the 1968 Flat form book where his name appears among the licensed jockeys as ‘Pearson, N.’. Just his name, that’s all; no weight listed; no employer, no address, no phone number, just ‘Pearson, N.’. He does not seem to have had any rides at all during that 1968 Flat season and thus it is possible that the third place finish on Princely Portion at Hexham two years earlier may have been his last ride in public.

Who knows what happened to Nicky Pearson? Maybe he stayed in Calcutta too long and lost his contacts in Britain, or perhaps the loss of his claim resulted in him falling pretty much off the racing map. Maybe there were other reasons. If anybody has any information regarding him, Jockeypedia would be keen to hear it.

Big winners:

1956: Goodwood Stakes – Terrington 

1956: Midlands Cesarewitch – Closebeck 

1957: Tote Investors Cup – No Comment 

1957: Cumberland Plate – Cannebiere 

1957: Lanark Silver Bell – Cannebiere

1957: Brighton Cup – Double Red 

1957: Royal Caledonian Hunt Cup – Cannebiere 

1957: Ayrshire Handicap – Tao