Room for more at Stride Ahead

2022 UK Season Preview - Room for more at Stride Ahead Racing

Nicki Malcolm and Nathan Sweeney of Stride Ahead Racing

© Debbie Burt

Just five miles from Dorset’s Jurassic coastline and nestled in the fabulous chalk downland countryside, part of the historic Whitcombe Manor Estate, is Monymusk Racing Stables. Across the road and with full use of all the training facilities is Monymusk Stud, home to Stride Ahead Racing run by Nikki Malcolm and Nathan Sweeney. They started Stride Ahead in 2014 on the back of the wealth of experience the couple had gained in the racing and endurance industries and now have a well-developed business, breaking and training racing Arabians and Endurance horses.

The pair met when they were working at thoroughbred National Hunt trainer, Bob Buckler’s yard near Bridgewater in Somerset around 13 years ago. Malcolm had been involved with Arabians and thoroughbreds, whilst Sweeney had been an amateur rider on the Irish point-topoint scene before moving to the UK and taking out his conditional licence, riding over fences for Buckler and other trainers.

Speaking of how the business began, Malcolm says: “It was just by chance really, I’d been asked to run an endurance yard by a lady with whom I’d been on the British Endurance team. She’d been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and it was looking as if she might have to retire from riding, so she asked me if I would run her yard for her, just so she could have one last year competing. I relocated to run the yard, but unfortunately her condition worsened faster than expected and she could no longer ride at all.

“She decided to emigrate to New Zealand, so I had to sell her horses for her and all the equipment, then the yard was empty. As a thank you for taking the chance to help her, which had involved me changing my whole life, she suggested I have the yard for 12 months to give me a leg up to start my own business.”

Malcolm seized the opportunity with both hands, appreciating that one of the largest financial worries to setting up in equestrian business, that of the premises, would be taken care of. She could focus on gaining contacts and owners and she found what she was offering became popular quite quickly, as she explains: “I think breaking and producing Arabians is quite a niche market. It was mainly horses for endurance, as I had a good name in that sport already, as well as having spent a big period of my life in Arabian racing. At the time there wasn’t quite as many Arabian racehorses around needing the help, so endurance horses became the main source of clients.”

Meanwhile despite some notable successes as a jockey, including winning a Grade 3 Chase at Cheltenham, the home of UK National Hunt racing, and switching to riding on the Flat, Sweeney decided to take the plunge with Malcolm and the pair haven’t looked back.

“Nathan decided to give me a hand to get it going” Malcom continues, “and it just became obvious that the business wasn’t going to move forward without him. We work so well together, and people liked the job that we were doing so they sent us more horses or were recommending us to their friends. It got to the point where we were full and couldn’t take any more horses in. That was when we thought perhaps we can get more stables and expand, and now we have this lovely yard.”

The recently refurbished seven furlong Hill Gallop

© Debbie Burt

Bill Smith presents his former employee Nikki Malcolm with the winners trophy for the Wathba Stallions Cup Handicap Stakes at Windsor in 2021

© Debbie Burt

Malcolm has a wealth of experience with Arabians in both sporting disciplines having worked for former leading Arabian trainer Bill Smith.

“We had a few endurance horses belong to Sheikh Mohammed sent over and Bill had asked me if I would like to take those on, as I had some experience with endurance horses. I ran a satellite yard for him with the endurance horses and then out of season I’d go back and help with the racehorses, exercising them and so on. I learnt a lot from Bill obviously, but he also had a fantastic head lad at the time, an absolutely brilliant man for checking legs and the sort of skills that you don’t see in racing anymore. I was lucky enough to work alongside him and learned so much from him.

“In my career so far, I’ve been fortunate to gain experience with some American trainers, as well as spending time in Dubai and I’ve been out to France a lot too. It means that you can pick the bits that you like, to make your own style of working. For us at Stride Ahead, everything is built on horsemanship and making sure our horses are happy, that’s what gets us the results. As a rider of a 100 mile endurance horse, you quickly realise that a horse doesn’t get anywhere unless it’s well looked after and sound, so we’ve applied that knowledge into everything, including the racehorses - they’ve got to be happy and they’ve got to be sound.”

She laughs saying: “They might win a race if they’re unhappy and not sound, but they won’t win two races!”

The couple moved their business to the 300 acre estate that the yard is based on at the beginning of 2018. At present they’ve rented two yards, comprising 14 stables, and plenty of turn out. Being out in the fresh air with access to grazing and just ‘being a horse’ is a big part of the Stride Ahead ethos.

“Each horse gets turned out on half an acre every day. During the winter we hire more land and turn them away properly, so they become a herd, rather than being in individual paddocks. Turn out I think is very important to a horse, so they don’t go without that unless the weather is really terrible.

“There’s plenty of room to expand if we wanted to, but at the moment the two of us enjoy having the complete control of all the horses in our care. We know everything that happens to them, every leg of every horse, even right down to what hole the girth goes on for each of them, that’s how well we know them. I think that shows when we compete, that we know them inside out.”

Returning to their extensive and well maintained facilities she says: “We have a horse walker and a lunge pit, though that’s being resurfaced at the moment. There’s the indoor arena for when the weathers bad. It’s also great during breaking when we get them started in long reins, in there they can learn to stop and start without being distracted, before we take them out across all sorts of terrain that we have here, which gets their confidence in going forwards.”

The Horsewalker is one of the many excellent facilities at Stride Ahead Racing

© Debbie Burt

Three-bay Starting Stalls

© Debbie Burt

“We have access two gallops. The Hill gallop is 7 furlongs, which has recently had a lot of money spent on it being refurbished and a new surface laid down, it’s absolutely top notch. The Flat gallop was put in about seven years ago and that’s 6 furlongs with a turning circle at the end so you can do plenty of repetitions if you want to. The two gallops link together so you can warm up on the Flat and then go up the Hill, or cool down on the Flat on your way home, there’s lots of different options. We’ve got a set of starting stalls and then also the wider walk-through stalls for the youngsters so there’s no pressure on them when they’re learning. We use them when we start them off in long reins so we can lead them through, then long rein them through and ride them through before they go into the proper stalls, so by the time they get to the races, it’s very natural to them.”

Whitcombe is part of a training estate that has seen a number of famous names go through it's gates and currently has two resident trainers. Ben James who is a salaried trainer to the estate’s owners, Michelle and Barry Crook, whilst Keiran Burke rents another one of the yards.

“There’s a lot of history here, there have been some really good horses trained here over the years, such as the Gold Cup winner, Cool Ground trained by Toby Balding. We’re just really lucky to be here. Both the racehorses and the endurance horses enjoy the change of scenery that we can offer them, they get ridden out in the beautiful countryside we have here, it does their minds good.

“We can go hacking for miles and rarely have to go on the road. It teaches the horses that they’re ok in a big open space. I think it can be quite daunting for a lot of youngsters when they get to a big open racecourse if they’ve only ever been on a gallop with polyrail either side of them, which can blow their minds a bit. Our horses will have seen a lot more out hacking than the average racehorse before they even get to a racecourse.”

Another useful resident in one of the many yards on the estate is Dorset Equine Vets.

“They’re just over the road. They have a drop-down box and can do most procedures on site, which saves a horse having to be sent away to Liphook or another equine clinic like that, most issues can be sorted here at home. There’s never the worry that a horse might need the vet and we can’t get one, you’d have a vet within in minutes here, so we’re really fortunate to have that on our doorstep.”

Having trained horses for other owners, including HH Sheikha Maryam bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, they decided to buy their own racehorse, Falcon Du Roc’h, who made a winning debut in the Stride Ahead colours last season.

Falcon Du Roc'h (FR) and Mr Cameron Iles go to post at Windsor

© Debbie Burt

Falcon Du Roc'h (FR) preparing to go out for exercise

© Debbie Burt

“We bought Falcon Du Roc’h during lockdown. I liked his bloodlines, as I’m very fond of Dormane on a damline, which he has, and obviously his sire, Tidarbret had won for friends of mine, Nikki and Andrew Thorne. I knew Nikki had had him up for sale previously, but he hadn’t been sold, Nikki’s stock mean the world to her so she was in no hurry to sell him. I also knew she’d want a really good home for him, which of course we could offer, so we spoke at the end of the 2020 racing season and said we’d like to take a chance on Falcon and what did she think? She was quite happy, I bought him for a very fair price and I think she’s getting a lot of satisfaction out of seeing him do well on the racecourse and knowing he’s well looked after.”

Falcon Du Roc’h’s previous owner Thorne, is a former World number 1 Endurance rider and past Chair of Endurance GB, for whom Malcolm has trained endurance horses and currently has one on the yard at Monymusk. “So she knows the care that goes into the horses here and the lifestyle that Falcon now leads,” says Malcolm smiling.

She continues: “There was a race that would have been perfect for him at Bath at the start of last season, but I knew that it was just that bit too early. Things weren’t quite right and I decided to wait, knowing that we would have him spot on for Windsor. It paid off. I don’t believe our horses need a run first timeout because we do get them fit at home. We’ve done it before with Johara [Bint Shuwaiman] as well. Although we’re a small yard, we have the facilities and the knowledge to get a horse fit to be competitive and win first time out.”

Johara Bint Shuwaiman was one of the first Arabian racehorses Malcolm handled for HH Sheikha Maryam. She arrived in 2017, having been lightly raced over two seasons by Jenny Lees of Pearl Island Arabians, placing once. In her first season with Malcolm she was placed three times from five starts, and the following year came close to winning her first three races, being denied the hattrick by a head at Chepstow. She went on to be placed a further three times.

“Johara bint Shuwaiman, came to us as a quirky mare, which is how I came to build the relationship I now have with Pearl Island Arabians, who have supported us with racehorses and continue to support us with endurance horses. Johara was becoming unrideable, working herself up and not settling down, so I think all the cross training that we do and giving the horses head space helped her. Being understanding riders helped too as one of my own horses had faced being put down if I hadn’t taken him on. So were used to that sort of horse. I do believe that if a human can have a medical condition such as being bipolar, or having autism, why can’t an animal.

“Sometimes you just really have to work hard to try and understand them, work out what’s upset them and what they need, don’t try and win a battle with them, leave those challenges out of the equation. Johara was one of those mares, it just worked with us and her. Then she was called up for stud duties, so hopefully there’ll be some nice offspring in a couple of years time.”

Nathan Sweeney, Johara Bint Shuwaiman (GB) Miss Ellie Mackenzie and Jenny Lees after her second win in 2018 at Taunton

© Debbie Burt

Falcon Du Roc'h (FR) and Nathan Sweeney go up the Hill Gallop with thoroughbred Gold Flash (GB) and Laura Perry

© Debbie Burt

One of the tools they use to help perfect the fitness edge, Malcolm learnt as part of her endurance training, she explains: “We do a lot of work using heart rate monitors, analysing the data, trying to replicate workouts throughout the season to see where we are with a horse. We also have a weigh bridge so when a horse wins we have a record what its weight was before it went to the races. So we know what their optimum weight and heart rate should be when they’re at full fitness. It’s also a useful indicator to tell you when they’re not quite right which can be hard to pick up any other way, if they look and feel well when you ride them, but their heart rates don’t really lie.

“It can’t replace good horsemanship, but it’s really useful if you understand how to use it. I was lucky that I trained with Dr David Marlin, who was my performance manager when I was on the Elite squad for the British Endurance team. I learnt a lot more about how to analyse heart rates and how to improve them and I’ve also found that useful for training racehorses.”

Some people might consider training one Arabian racehorse on its’ own to be too much of a challenge to be worth taking on, however Malcolm has no such concerns saying: “We’re pretty isolated in Dorset. It’s not like Newmarket, but there are two thoroughbred trainers based here too, we’re all really friendly, we have a WhatsApp group and help each other out on the gallops, it all works really well. We have a thoroughbred of our own and Falcon will quite happily sit in behind the other thoroughbreds on the gallops. We’ve worked upsides one of Ben’s on the Flat gallop just to get him used to that, because he’s not done a lot of that this year, since he’s been back into work. The horses certainly get all the training that they need despite not having a huge string of Arabians to work with.”

Recalling busier days working for Smith she says: “When I worked for Bill we used to love taking a team to Newbury for Dubai Day. Obviously it wasn’t far from where we were based then and all the excitement and preparation for it, we loved it. The best thing about working for Bill was the consistency of the results, there was rarely a bad day at the office. Of course it helps to have good horses, but the excellent staff, the great head lad and the great preparation, during that era at Bills, everybody was fantastic, it was brilliant to be involved, there was so much to learn, so much that you could take away with you. Priceless really.

“We would love to have more Arabian racehorses here, it would be great to have a string them, it’s just getting word out there that we’d like them, that we’re here and we can do a great job for new owners.”

Mr Cameron Iles, Falcon Du Roc'h (FR) Nikki Malcolm and Nathan Sweeney in the winners enclosure at Windsor in 2021

© Debbie Burt

T H E A R A B I A N R A C E H O R S E - Spring 2022