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Another good jockey leaving these shores
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One Spock to another, what were the odds?
It has been more than five weeks since Laura Pearson landed the biggest success of her riding career aboard Sparks Fly in the Group 3 Princess Elizabeth Stakes on Derby day, yet in that time she has had barely a dozen opportunities to add to her first winner of the year.
Pearson is one of only four female riders to have had a winner at Royal Ascot, but she was absent from all five days of this year's meeting, and her services in the saddle have been required at only three meetings this month.
The dearth of opportunities, especially after producing one of the rides of the season when going it alone along the inside rail to win on Sparks Fly at Epsom, makes little sense, but to her credit the 25-year-old remains upbeat.
Together with a sports psychologist, she has worked hard on her mentality and, even though she'd much rather be warming up for action on a racecourse than sipping a lunchtime coffee in a cafe in Newmarket, where she is based with trainer Kevin Philippart de Foy, she has a knack of keeping the conversation in a positive place. Confident in her own ability, she isn't prepared to let the factors she cannot control have a negative effect.
"I'm someone who thrives off working hard and doing well, but I find that in this industry it doesn't really matter how hard you work, sometimes it's just a bit of luck," she explains. "I get annoyed when you get interviewed and someone says, 'You deserve more.’ I fully understand they're trying to be nice, but who doesn't deserve to get more?
"I'm extremely lucky that I've got Sparks Fly and I'd be very much lost without her. If she hadn't been there over the last two seasons, I don't know if I'd have been looking at doing new ventures."
Owned and trained respectively by the rider's two biggest supporters, Dave Lowe and Dave Loughnane, Sparks Fly has become synonymous with Pearson and vice versa.
She first rode the six-year-old as a 3lb claimer in 2023. Eleven wins together later, Sparks Fly has climbed from an official rating of 60 to a career-high 113 after Epsom. There have been four Listed wins and a Group 3 in France along the way, but winning a Group race in Britain saw Pearson achieve a long-held personal goal.
"I spent three and a half months over the winter in Australia and was umming and ahhing whether to come home," she says. "In the end I came home for that mare, and for that to pay off was a big thing.
"I probably spent the first month, when it was quiet, questioning whether I'd made the right decision, but I've no doubt it was now. I had the Group 3 win in France on her at the end of last year, but doing it at home meant a whole lot more.
"I don't think I've ever been as confident going into a race in my life. It was just a gut feeling and she made the rest of them look like handicappers. I was very proud of her and I guess I was proud of myself as well for trying to keep a positive mentality for so long."
Pearson's first win of 2026 came at a track where she had suffered by far the worst injury of her career four years earlier. She fractured her C7 vertebra in her neck when unseated after her saddle slipped in a mile race at Epsom in July 2022. She was out of action for six months, but her true rehabilitation has taken far longer.
"I had real bad long-term concussion," she says. "I feel great now, but for the first and second year after it, I almost felt a bit slow in myself. The brain is a muscle at the end of the day and I had to work hard to get it to where it is now.
"In the races themselves, my decision-making felt slow and I felt like I couldn't read it as sharply as I could before. Now, I feel like I can make those split-second decisions.
"The doctor basically said that part of my brain was dead, but explained that you can work and build around it, and now it's all clicking into place because I've worked hard to get it moving."
Despite the repercussions of the fall, Pearson largely picked up where she had left off when returning to the track. Based with Ralph Beckett at the time, she partnered 27 winners from 276 rides in Britain in 2023 to see out her claim.
If you'd said at that time that she would add only 16 domestic winners in the next two and a half years, it would have seemed hard to believe. But that is the reality.
"A lot of it is down to contacts," she says. "I was really fortunate to be a 3lb claimer for Mr Beckett. I had an amazing experience and rode some amazing horses, but when I lost my claim that obviously fell through and I was just left in the lurch a little bit, and I've kind of just been scrambling ever since.
"I'm so lucky that Dave Loughnane supports me. He's been my main trainer for a long time, but one isn't enough. It's hard to build up contacts and that's why I say to any 5lb or 3lb claimer that you need to start thinking now about the trainers you're surrounding yourself with, because that's what is going to throw you into being professional."
While trying to steer the next generation of riders in the right direction, Pearson holds no regrets about the way she went about her apprenticeship. Life was throwing a lot at her at the time and dealing with the present was a bigger priority than worrying about the future.
"I learned a lot from Ralph," she says. "He's incredibly intelligent and mentally hardened me up a lot, which I appreciate now. I have so much respect for him and wish I could have worked out for him, but I'm probably not a big enough name to be in a yard like that sadly.
"I think I just got lost a little bit. When I was at Ralph's my dad died and then my partner died, so I threw it all into racing and mentally I probably wasn't in my best place. I feel like if I was in the place that I am now, maybe it would have been different."
Pearson's pet hate is negativity, which explains why her focus nowadays is on what the future might hold rather than the pitfalls of the past, but there is one topic that has irked her on more than one occasion and she is keen to set the record straight. The perceived lack of opportunities for female riders in Britain is misguided as far as she is concerned and has never been a factor during her time in the weighing room.
"I think if you're good enough, you're good enough," says Pearson, who is part of the Amo Racing team based with Philippart de Foy. "I almost think to a degree that there's been a few times that the industry has been a bit too sympathetic to female riders because they want to push them.
"Personally, since I've been riding, I've never felt that there's a divide and I feel like it's something that gets blown up in the media that probably doesn't need to be.”
That is not to say a professional rider exists without disappointment, but she is clear that any hardship can be felt just as acutely in the male changing room as it can in the female one.
"You put so much into it and, when you don't get out of it what you want, it breaks your heart," she says. "I think that's why I was very close to walking away, because it was just breaking my heart. I think a lot of us in the weighing room would be the same. We deal with it in different ways, but at the end of the day we're just gutted that it's not where we want it to be."
Despite that pain, being unable to ride competitively during her time in Australia helped her realise that she is nowhere near ready to call it a day in the saddle. Instead, she intends to return to the other side of the world and hopes the red tape does not prevent her competing on the track next time. Should everything go to plan, it is plausible that this may well be Pearson’s last year riding in Britain.
"I'm 99 per cent sure that once Sparks Fly retires, the next move will be Australia," she says. "I've given this country enough of a kick and, now I've had the Group winner here, it's made me more comfortable about moving on to the next country and giving it a kick out there.
"I've always said I want to live in Australia and last winter gave me the clarity that it's where I want to be in the long run. I've had multiple Listed winners, two Group 3 winners and a Royal Ascot winner, so really it's not that bad, but I like being someone who keeps working and keeps moving up.
"I think I've hit a brick wall in this country and don't know whether I'm ever going to get back to the level I want to be at. If that means moving across the world, that's what I'll do. What's the point in playing it safe?"
It has been more than five weeks since Laura Pearson landed the biggest success of her riding career aboard Sparks Fly in the Group 3 Princess Elizabeth Stakes on Derby day, yet in that time she has had barely a dozen opportunities to add to her first winner of the year.
Pearson is one of only four female riders to have had a winner at Royal Ascot, but she was absent from all five days of this year's meeting, and her services in the saddle have been required at only three meetings this month.
The dearth of opportunities, especially after producing one of the rides of the season when going it alone along the inside rail to win on Sparks Fly at Epsom, makes little sense, but to her credit the 25-year-old remains upbeat.
Together with a sports psychologist, she has worked hard on her mentality and, even though she'd much rather be warming up for action on a racecourse than sipping a lunchtime coffee in a cafe in Newmarket, where she is based with trainer Kevin Philippart de Foy, she has a knack of keeping the conversation in a positive place. Confident in her own ability, she isn't prepared to let the factors she cannot control have a negative effect.
"I'm someone who thrives off working hard and doing well, but I find that in this industry it doesn't really matter how hard you work, sometimes it's just a bit of luck," she explains. "I get annoyed when you get interviewed and someone says, 'You deserve more.’ I fully understand they're trying to be nice, but who doesn't deserve to get more?
"I'm extremely lucky that I've got Sparks Fly and I'd be very much lost without her. If she hadn't been there over the last two seasons, I don't know if I'd have been looking at doing new ventures."
Owned and trained respectively by the rider's two biggest supporters, Dave Lowe and Dave Loughnane, Sparks Fly has become synonymous with Pearson and vice versa.
She first rode the six-year-old as a 3lb claimer in 2023. Eleven wins together later, Sparks Fly has climbed from an official rating of 60 to a career-high 113 after Epsom. There have been four Listed wins and a Group 3 in France along the way, but winning a Group race in Britain saw Pearson achieve a long-held personal goal.
"I spent three and a half months over the winter in Australia and was umming and ahhing whether to come home," she says. "In the end I came home for that mare, and for that to pay off was a big thing.
"I probably spent the first month, when it was quiet, questioning whether I'd made the right decision, but I've no doubt it was now. I had the Group 3 win in France on her at the end of last year, but doing it at home meant a whole lot more.
"I don't think I've ever been as confident going into a race in my life. It was just a gut feeling and she made the rest of them look like handicappers. I was very proud of her and I guess I was proud of myself as well for trying to keep a positive mentality for so long."
Pearson's first win of 2026 came at a track where she had suffered by far the worst injury of her career four years earlier. She fractured her C7 vertebra in her neck when unseated after her saddle slipped in a mile race at Epsom in July 2022. She was out of action for six months, but her true rehabilitation has taken far longer.
"I had real bad long-term concussion," she says. "I feel great now, but for the first and second year after it, I almost felt a bit slow in myself. The brain is a muscle at the end of the day and I had to work hard to get it to where it is now.
"In the races themselves, my decision-making felt slow and I felt like I couldn't read it as sharply as I could before. Now, I feel like I can make those split-second decisions.
"The doctor basically said that part of my brain was dead, but explained that you can work and build around it, and now it's all clicking into place because I've worked hard to get it moving."
Despite the repercussions of the fall, Pearson largely picked up where she had left off when returning to the track. Based with Ralph Beckett at the time, she partnered 27 winners from 276 rides in Britain in 2023 to see out her claim.
If you'd said at that time that she would add only 16 domestic winners in the next two and a half years, it would have seemed hard to believe. But that is the reality.
"A lot of it is down to contacts," she says. "I was really fortunate to be a 3lb claimer for Mr Beckett. I had an amazing experience and rode some amazing horses, but when I lost my claim that obviously fell through and I was just left in the lurch a little bit, and I've kind of just been scrambling ever since.
"I'm so lucky that Dave Loughnane supports me. He's been my main trainer for a long time, but one isn't enough. It's hard to build up contacts and that's why I say to any 5lb or 3lb claimer that you need to start thinking now about the trainers you're surrounding yourself with, because that's what is going to throw you into being professional."
While trying to steer the next generation of riders in the right direction, Pearson holds no regrets about the way she went about her apprenticeship. Life was throwing a lot at her at the time and dealing with the present was a bigger priority than worrying about the future.
"I learned a lot from Ralph," she says. "He's incredibly intelligent and mentally hardened me up a lot, which I appreciate now. I have so much respect for him and wish I could have worked out for him, but I'm probably not a big enough name to be in a yard like that sadly.
"I think I just got lost a little bit. When I was at Ralph's my dad died and then my partner died, so I threw it all into racing and mentally I probably wasn't in my best place. I feel like if I was in the place that I am now, maybe it would have been different."
Pearson's pet hate is negativity, which explains why her focus nowadays is on what the future might hold rather than the pitfalls of the past, but there is one topic that has irked her on more than one occasion and she is keen to set the record straight. The perceived lack of opportunities for female riders in Britain is misguided as far as she is concerned and has never been a factor during her time in the weighing room.
"I think if you're good enough, you're good enough," says Pearson, who is part of the Amo Racing team based with Philippart de Foy. "I almost think to a degree that there's been a few times that the industry has been a bit too sympathetic to female riders because they want to push them.
"Personally, since I've been riding, I've never felt that there's a divide and I feel like it's something that gets blown up in the media that probably doesn't need to be.”
That is not to say a professional rider exists without disappointment, but she is clear that any hardship can be felt just as acutely in the male changing room as it can in the female one.
"You put so much into it and, when you don't get out of it what you want, it breaks your heart," she says. "I think that's why I was very close to walking away, because it was just breaking my heart. I think a lot of us in the weighing room would be the same. We deal with it in different ways, but at the end of the day we're just gutted that it's not where we want it to be."
Despite that pain, being unable to ride competitively during her time in Australia helped her realise that she is nowhere near ready to call it a day in the saddle. Instead, she intends to return to the other side of the world and hopes the red tape does not prevent her competing on the track next time. Should everything go to plan, it is plausible that this may well be Pearson’s last year riding in Britain.
"I'm 99 per cent sure that once Sparks Fly retires, the next move will be Australia," she says. "I've given this country enough of a kick and, now I've had the Group winner here, it's made me more comfortable about moving on to the next country and giving it a kick out there.
"I've always said I want to live in Australia and last winter gave me the clarity that it's where I want to be in the long run. I've had multiple Listed winners, two Group 3 winners and a Royal Ascot winner, so really it's not that bad, but I like being someone who keeps working and keeps moving up.
"I think I've hit a brick wall in this country and don't know whether I'm ever going to get back to the level I want to be at. If that means moving across the world, that's what I'll do. What's the point in playing it safe?"
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