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By Ray Hickson

He was too small to pursue football and he’s borderline too big to be a jockey but somehow Nick Heywood has found his place.

It’s hard to imagine that someone so passionate now about racing, and in particular the horse, could have been so disinterested in a sport he was born into.

Although he’s the son of a racehorse trainer – Wagga based Chris Heywood - all a young Nick wanted to do as a teenager was play football. But by the time he was 16 nature had stepped in.

Now 26, Heywood can’t think of anything else he’d rather be doing and anywhere else he’d rather be. And his win on Another One in the Newhaven Park Country Championships Final at Royal Randwick is vindication.

“I wasn’t much of a fan early days,’’ Heywood said.

“Dad trained but I wanted to play footy, that was the goal. I was playing league and union.

“But I was too small and too light and kept getting hurt.”

Nick Heywood collects his Newhaven Park Country Championships Final trophy from racing minister Kevin Anderson (Pic: Bradley Photos).

When football left the table as an option he eventually turned to racing. The financial rewards were there if you committed to it and he was sent to Peter Clancy to be shaped as a rider.

The Leeton based trainer is known as something of a genius with apprentices, he and his late wife Nerida would take in a young rider and guide them as their own, and Heywood said it was there that his passion for racing started to form.

“He’s like the Theo Green of the bush,’’ Heywood said.

“He’s had John Kissick, Tim Clark, Brad Clark, he’s had plenty of apprentices in his time and they treat you their own family. Nerida has passed away but they were both a big influence.

“I got that passion for the horses and it just takes the bad days away being around a horse.

“I don’t know what it is about them, but they give you that feeling that you just can’t be mad at them. You can’t describe it.”

The irony in the fact Heywood was a bit too small for football is that he really has to watch his weight to be a jockey.

He returned to Wagga to be apprenticed to his father and it did take little while for him to break through, that was on a horse called Memphis Flash at Deniliquin in October 2013.

Three years later he rode his first city winner and finished his apprenticeship in Sydney with Peter and Paul Snowden. He can say he rode dual Everest winner Redzel quite a bit in his work but it was in Sydney that his issues with weight would cause problems.

“In town you’ve got to be able to take weight off the minimum to get rides or you need a big stable backing you,’’ he said.

“I had good backing at the provincial tracks but when they go to Sydney they’re happy to put Hugh (Bowman) or James (McDonald) on which is fair enough.

“Being heavy I didn’t get much of an opportunity in town as an apprentice which is a shame.

“I feel like the experience helped and I’m a lot better rider now. When I get an opportunity in Sydney I feel like I take it more than ever.”

Another One is a little bit like Heywood in a way. So their pairing is serendipitous.

He was purchased by trainer Gary Colvin for $18,000 in 2019 at the Inglis Classic Sale basically on gut feel. The young horse needed to mature but Colvin felt he was worth the risk.

Like Colvin, when Heywood first saw Another One he took an instant liking to the lanky colt.

“I was lucky enough to have ridden him the whole way through his career, even as a baby. I always liked him,’’ Heywood said.

“We connected well and it’s a big help when you know the horse and ride them every day.

“He wasn’t much to look at. Gary thinks he looked a bit like a gazelle, lanky and skinny. He’s like an AFL player.

“He didn’t have the looks but when he was out there he got the job done.

“I don’t think we have hit the bottom of him yet. This time he’s come back in and filled into himself, he’s not far from being the complete horse.”

That was evident at Randwick on Day 1 of The Star Championships and the growth in the horse is paralleled by Heywood’s growth as a jockey.

Another One and Nick Heywood after winning the Newhaven Park Country Championships Final. (Pic: Bradley Photos)

He rode the gelding into second place behind Art Cadeau in the Country Championships Final of 2021 and was determined to go one better if he got a second chance.

A copybook ride on his home track in the Southern Districts Championships at Wagga on February 19, earning Another One the honour of being the first horse to win two regional qualifying races, is an example of Heywood’s maturity. But his ride at Randwick topped it.

Heywood has always had confidence in Another One but he revealed he did need his own confidence boosted on the morning of the Final and it came via a tight-knit group of friends – his sister Brittany and her fiancé Darrell Burnet, his partner Hannah Williams, and Cory Sutherland.

“I was talking in the hotel the morning of the race to Darrell, Britt, Hannah and Cory and Darrell was saying the horse was spot on, we’re ticking all the boxes and the only thing we hadn’t done was win,’’ Heywood said.

“Darrell filled me with a lot of confidence, he’s a very good judge and every time he’s told me ‘it’ll be right’ he’s been right. He could be a punter, that’s how well he does his form.

“The issue was getting the right run at the right time and winning it. It was going to be a fairytale and for it to pan out the way it did was too good to be true.”

When he was an apprentice, Hugh Bowman was one of the jockeys that Heywood admired and watched closely. It was Bowman that wound up being key to Another One becoming the first Southern Districts-trained horse to win the Country Championships Final.

Heywood went onto the track with two plans. Plan A was ride Another One on the pace as he’d done at Wagga. Plan B was to ride for luck on the inside of the track where few jockey had gone to on the day so far. One of those who did was Bowman when he won the Adrian Knox on Honeycreeper.

“Hughie did it earlier on in the day and I had a chat to Gary, and I said ideally we’d like to be like Wagga and put him on pace,’’ he said.

“If he’s a bit slow away we’d ride him back, ride for luck and cut the corner and come out to the better going. I knew he could do it because he can run the same time on a heavy track as he can on a dry track.

“Knowing what I know I thought if he was ever going to win one it was there for the taking. It’s a bit unreal.

“I don’t know if they misjudge our area a bit but we’re not given much of a chance in those races. It was good to prove that our area is just as good.”

*This article originally appeared in the May 2022 edition of the Racing NSW magazine

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