It’s been a whirlwind last few years for Maija Vance, and the former jockey is taking the next step in that journey after joining her partner, Josh King, in a training partnership this week.
Vance won 94 races in the saddle in New Zealand before she was involved in a well-publicised race fall in 2018, where she suffered several injuries, including damaging her spinal cord.
Doctors feared she wouldn’t be able to walk again, but after intense rehabilitation, she was able to defy those odds, and 18 months later she hiked to the top of Mount Maunganui in a fundraising effort for the CatWalk Trust.
Vance, the daughter of trainers Bob and Jenny Vance, continued to tick up the milestones in the next few years, returning to the saddle and eventually riding track work, and is now commencing life as a trainer.
“I didn’t want to (train) and then I met Josh, and we started to work together,” Vance said. “He had quite a lot of success in Queensland, he was private trainer for one of the big studs there.
“Josh started training over here and I started helping him, and it has gone from there. He said ‘you might as well put your name down as the trainer as well’. It’s not something that I planned on doing, it just happened.”
The newly formed partnership had their first runner at Cambridge on Wednesday, and while their first attempt wasn’t successful, they are hoping to rectify that when they head to Ruakaka on Saturday with Bad Education, who will contest the Marsden Cove Dental 1300.
“I think he is a good chance,” Vance said. “His first start when we got him, he ran 26 lengths last, so he has improved a lot. We have put in a lot of work to improve him with his body work and his mind, and he is feeling so good at the moment.
“He ran really well at Ruakaka when he ran third. They weren’t making any ground that day and he made up a lot of ground and ran really well. The next time we went back there it was the wettest I have ever seen Ruakaka. He tried hard but it was just too wet for him.
“He had won on Soft and Heavy tracks in Australia, but their Heavy isn’t anything like our Heavy. We are excited to see him on a slightly better track on Saturday.”
Vance is looking forward to having her parents present on Saturday, with the Ardmore Lodge trainers being represented in the A1 Homes Bream Bay Stayers 2100 by Double Take.
“It is a good thing they are not in the same race. I just think they are sensational trainers, and I would rather not run into them in a race,” Vance said.
“Mum and Dad are just such amazing horse people and I have spent most of my life around them and their stable. I have learnt so much from them and they just prioritise the horse and keep the horse happy and healthy.”
King and Vance currently have eight horses in work, many of whom were sourced from Australia, and Vance said she gets a kick out of seeing them enjoy the change of environment in New Zealand.
“We are getting a few horses from Australia and most of them have been trained at the big tracks,” Vance said. “They are being boxed 24/7, so it is really cool when they come here because we have got them out in paddocks all day and big walk-in/walk-out boxes, and on the weekends, we will load them up and take them to the beach.
“It is really cool to see them spark up, especially the older horses.”
While horses and racing are two of Vance’s main passions, content creation is her other love. The 34-year-old has achieved plenty of success in that space, accruing nearly one million followers on Tiktok, and she is enjoying sharing her racing journey with her audience.
“It is cool that there are that many people that care about what I am doing,” she said. “I do a lot of racing content on our racing page, and I have been posting a lot of that to my normal page as well.
“A lot of my followers are equestrian people because I post a lot of equestrian content. It is cool that so many of those people are now seeing what we are doing in the racing stable and how well the horses are treated.
“It is cool that there are people who weren’t interested in racing before that are now following our horses and watching them race.
“I don’t think people realise what goes into training and how much effort we put into keeping the horses happy. We will just take the horses to the beach for a sunrise ride, go hacking along the beach and swim them. It is cool to show people how much effort we put into them.”
There are plenty of exciting developments in the stable heading into the new season, with King and Vance in the process of trying to purchase the property they train from in Cambridge.
“We are looking at buying the property where we are renting, which is a massive property with 22 paddocks and 32 boxes,” Vance said. “Then we can expand as much as we want to.”
While Vance was potentially looking at a life in a wheelchair several years ago, she is glad she defied the odds and is loving her life with horses.
“Being upright is a win for me,” she said. “I just feel so lucky that I am able to handle the horses, ride a few quiet ones and help out as much as I can.”
