Colin Oscopy proved to be the most popular winner of the day at Te Aroha on Sunday, not just because of his controversial name, but also because it brought up amateur jockey Leigh Phelan’s first raceday winner.
“I had to keep hiding yesterday because I couldn’t take the attention afterwards!” Phelan told RaceForm on Monday.
“I was actually pretty confident going into the race. I usually get quite nervous, but I wasn’t on Sunday at all. I was more excited than anything.
“When the nominations came out and I saw Colin Oscopy was down to run in the Te Aroha Cup, I asked Sam Logan (trainer) if I could ride him, but she said that he was going to start at Tauranga. When I saw he was six on the ballot at Tauranga, I asked again, but she wasn’t sure if he was going to start.
“Then at 7am on Sunday morning, Sam texted me and said I was on. It was last-minute, but I didn’t want to be on anything else. I was completely confident in the horse.
“It felt incredible to win! And it was an amazing feeling to be on a horse that kicked away. I was screaming at the top of my lungs, and I could hear my dad in the grandstand screaming too,” she laughs.
Phelan is full of praise for both the horse and the trainer.
“The horse helped me out a lot. He has a good kick and he just loves that ground. To do what he did carrying 19kg of dead weight is insane. I ride with a full lead bag with Paul Hillis’ old saddle. I might as well be carrying a feed bag!
“And Sam (Logan) is such a lovely person and such a hard worker. Her truck is always first in at the track in the mornings and she works all day. Racing needs more women like her.”
For Phelan, racing is a family affair. The 22-year-old is the daughter of Craig and Carol Phelan, and is the sister of Shaun Phelan. Craig and Shaun train together in partnership out of Cambridge and Shaun is also a renowned jumps jockey.
But despite being entrenched in racing from an early age, she was never pushed into joining the sport.
“We have an older sister who is not into horses at all, whereas Shaun always wanted to be a jockey. I was more interested in the equestrian side of things growing up. I used to do a lot of competing and riding trackwork before I went to school. But when we moved the stables from Rotorua to Cambridge, I was still attending school in Rotorua, so stopped with racehorses completely, and got quite into the shows.
“After I finished high school, I worked for the hunt club for a year, riding horses for people. I was also working at the wildlife park, where I used to cut up meat for the lions!
“I then decided that I wanted to study in Hamilton, and that’s when I got back into racing. I started working for Margaret Falconer and Andrew Campbell in Cambridge, and now I mainly ride for Dad and Shaun, and also for Shaune Ritchie and Colm Murray. I’m lucky that I now have a number of great trainers who support me.”
These days, she’s still heavily involved in her father and brother’s stable, and has a close relationship with Shaun.
“Dad is a bit more in the background now with the training but he still travels over to help every day. Shaun and I are complete opposites but we get on really well, and we get on with opposite horses too. We’ve got heaps of people that help us out as well.”
Phelan is usually sighted at Cambridge trackwork in the early mornings, but on raceday, if she’s not on a horse, she can often be seen behind the camera in her role as Content Creator for New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing.
“The horse has always been the big thing for me, but media has also always been a huge interest of mine,” says Phelan.
“I did photography and art all through school and I always used to take my camera with me to the races. I knew that I wanted to get into journalism since I was about nine.
“So I decided to study at Wintec, where I did a Bachelor of Communications and a Diploma in Journalism. I used to have to do these assignments, and our tutors would tell us we should put the finished products on social media. I didn’t even have Twitter at the time, but I got it, and started posting videos.
“One of them was on Peter Neal, and Mary Burgess (Corporate Communications and Media at NZTR) spotted it and put in a good word for me at NZTR. It started as a six-month internship for Loveracing, which turned into a part-time gig, and that turned into a full-time gig. And here I am!”
The videos that she creates for the Loveracing.nz brand are polished and professional, and her natural talent for storytelling shines through in her work.
“I want to keep getting better at what I’m doing. I love creating things and visual media and storytelling. I really enjoy doing the character interviews and profile pieces.”
What many people may not be aware of are the challenges that Phelan has faced to get to where she is today; she does not often tell people about the accident that she had when she was 15 years old.
“I had a horse flip on me,” she remembers. “It smashed my pelvis, my hips, everything.
“I was in hospital for a couple of weeks and a wheelchair for a couple of months. I was in physio for nine months and had to learn to walk again.
“The doctors said to me, ‘we’re not sure how you’re going to recover, we’ve never had a 15-year-old with hips smashed like this. You might never walk again and if you do, you might be very immobile.’
“But I thought, bugger that. I was back on my pony a few months later.
“It has just made me more determined to succeed in my life.”
