Olive Nicholls has announced her retirement from race riding to take up a key role as full-time assistant to her champion trainer father, Paul Nicholls. The 20-year-old amateur jockey made the announcement after completing a double at Newton Abbot on Wednesday, bringing her total under rules to 25.
A Brief but Successful Riding Career
In a short riding career, Olive, the younger sister of ITV racing regular Meg Nicholls, enjoyed success in point-to-points and under rules. Her biggest victory came when Viroflay, trained by her 14-time champion father, won a handicap chase at Kempton in December. She scored again on Viroflay at Newton Abbot on Wednesday and completed a double on Golden Son, part-owned by former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, on the same card. The successes brought her score under rules to 25, 18 of which were trained by her father and four by her mother, Georgina Nicholls.
Emotional Farewell
Paul Nicholls posted on X: "Mighty proud of @NichollsOlive who after riding a double on Viroflay and Golden Son @NewtonAbbotRace retired from race riding, with a total of 25 NH wins and numerous point to points. What a way to go out."
Olive told Mirror Racing: "I’ve been thinking about it this season. I have always loved the training side of the sport and I have basically been riding for fun. I loosely decided that I would stop at the end of the season and I couldn’t have finished in a better way than last night. It felt like the right time to do it then. Both horses had good chances and are pretty special to me. For them to both win was perfect."
Next Chapter as Assistant Trainer
Olive has experience running her own point-to-point and pre-training yard and rode 28 winners between the flags. She was a pupil assistant at her father’s famous Ditcheat stables during the latest campaign. "I have now moved up to assistant to Dad, which was always the route I wanted to go down," she added. "So hopefully that is the start of the next chapter. Ultimately I would like to train in the long run and that is the direction I am heading. I couldn’t have a better person to learn from than my father."
