LAUR AND ORDER...

Pearson so driven in apprentice title race

LAuRA PEARSON’S sense of frustration at leaving the racecourse after drawing a blank shows just how far she has travelled.

“Sometimes, when I’m driving back from the races and I haven’t had a winner – and I’ve had five rides that day – I’m all angry and annoyed,” admits the 20-year-old.

“And I just think about six months ago, I’d have been ecstatic that I’d had five rides on one card.”

For two years, the Suffolk-born jockey’s career stalled.

Having ridden her first winner, for then boss John Ryan on Plucky Dip at Catterick Bridge in October 2018, Pearson had to wait 386 days for her second, aboard Herringswell at Yarmouth the following autumn.

Two of her next three victories were gained on the Henry Spiller-trained filly, but after nearly three weeks of November 2020, Pearson had a mere five successes to her name.

“You’ve always got to have a bit of luck and I was lucky to come across a filly called Herringswell,” said Pearson

(right), whose parents met on the pony racing circuit.

“You have to have that one horse to get you noticed, or you are just swimming around in a big pond.”

Herringswell’s lengthand-a-quarter defeat of Prophecy at Newcastle on November 20 began a winning streak that only Pearson’s self-imposed exile to preserve her apprentice claim – now 5lb – for the 2021 turf campaign could halt.

During December, Pearson, who grew up in the south of France before returning home at 10 years of age, partnered 11 horses to success at a strike-rate of 30 per cent.

“It turned over massively,” she said. “Once a couple of people put faith in you and you ride a couple of winners for them, everybody then starts giving you a chance.”

Bar its final six weeks, 2020 was a year of personal anguish for Pearson.

No sooner had coronavirus brought racing to a halt in March than she learned of her father Craig’s cancer. The former point-to-point rider succumbed two months later. Pearson had relocated from Dave Evans’ Monmouthshire yard – where she worked with Hollie Doyle – to Newmarket, joining Tom Clover’s stable, and signing up with agent Steve Croft.

The likes of Ralph Beckett, Richard Fahey, James Fanshawe, Karl Burke and Stuart Williams have called on Pearson’s services, and a challenge for the 2021 apprentice title is firmly in her sights.

Pearson, who trails pal Marco Ghiani 26-25 in the race for the claimers’ crown for the all-weather season – which ends at Lingfield Park on Friday – added: “It would be great to come back and get Marco on the line, but we’ve got our eyes set on the turf championship.

“I think it is going to be a tight one this year.”