Michelle Nihei Training on Opening Day at the Spa T-Shirt

Michelle Nihei’s life changed one morning in 2001 when she showed up on the backstretch at Keeneland and persuaded a trainer to let her gallop a horse. No one at the Lexington, Ky., track knew anything about her or her background, but that didn’t matter. Nihei got around the track just fine and knew in an instant that she had found her calling. Michelle Nihei is rubbing shoulders with top trainers at Saratoga, where she had two horses racing on opening day Wednesday. “After my first horse, it was like the light went on,” Nihei said. “I just knew that’s where I was supposed to be.” Nihei (pronounced NEE-hay) was not the first person to show up at the track and decide it was the life for them, but she had a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of and was not far removed from her days as a member of the junior faculty at Johns Hopkins. She could have had a long career as a scientist. Instead, she chose to take her diplomas, her training and her background and virtually dump them in the trash. “I just knew I’d be happiest doing this,” she said. Nihei’s career path has taken her to Saratoga, where, as a new face among the training colony, she hopes to prove she can compete at the highest level while building a foundation for further success. Nihei, 38, grew up in Calgary, Alberta, where she immersed herself in horses and equestrian sports, riding frequently. She followed horse racing, but only on television and through newspapers and magazines. She did not attend a horse race until she arrived in to begin working towards her doctorate. From she went to Johns Hopkins, where she worked for four and a half years conducting research and clinical trials — for example, on the effects of lead paint on humans. Still, she found herself growing dissatisfied and restless. “At some level, there was disillusionment,” she said. “How happy was I at Hopkins? Politics was starting to become involved and I was naïve. You think success will come your way on merit alone, but politics play a part and I don’t think I really understood that. I truly wasn’t as happy doing that as I thought I’d be.” She left Johns Hopkins and returned to not entirely sure what she was going to do, but intent on somehow making horses a part of her life. The singular thrill of exercising a horse one morning at Keeneland shaped her future. “My grandparents were taken aback,” said Nihei, whose parents had died by the time she made her career decision. “I felt badly for my grandfather because his crowning achievement had been having his granddaughter end up at Hopkins. He’d drag me around to his old cronies and introduce me as his granddaughter from Johns Hopkins. After I started riding, he was very quiet about it.” Nihei worked as an exercise rider for several trainers before landing a job with the powerful Todd Pletcher stable in 2003 and eventually becoming an assistant. With Pletcher, one of the top trainers in the sport, she was able to work with numerous outstanding horses, but Nihei wanted more. She felt she had to achieve a certain level of success in racing to justify leaving science behind. That meant going out on her own as a trainer and someday winning a race like the Derby, Nihei said. As it is with most trainers, she got off to a modest start. She made her debut in December 2007 at Tampa Bay Downs with seven horses, the majority of them owned by Elisabeth Alexander. Alexander, of Hunting Valley, Ohio, had horses with Pletcher and was convinced that the brainy assistant she had met at the barn was ready to train on her own. “She was the one who pushed me out of the nest,” Nihei said. “She encouraged me to go out on my own and has been an enormous benefit and help.” Alexander said: “When she wanted to go out on her own, I was very happy to back her. She’s proving to the world that she’s as good as we thought she’d be. I don’t think there’s too many other Ph.D.s on the backstretch.” Pletcher also gave his blessing, which gave Nihei the confidence she needed. She won her first race Jan. 6, 2008, and has worked since to get better. “I always set the bar pretty high,” she said. “Once I decide on a goal, in horse racing terminology, it’s blinkers on. The kind of things where I can prove how good I can be, that’s what appeals to me.” Nihei has won only 14 races during her short career, but she has been slowly building the quantity and quality of her stable. She has 14 horses at Saratoga, and although her horses finished seventh and eighth in two races on opening day Wednesday, she is confident she will have a good meet. Her supporters include Pletcher, who believes Nihei has all the attributes to make it. “Michelle was a very hard-working, intelligent and dedicated assistant,” he said. “I think she will be a very successful trainer.” Going to Saratoga is part of a larger plan. Nihei understands that she still has to make a name for herself in racing, and there is no better place to do that than Saratoga. It is how she approached her previous profession, always aiming for the top. “No matter what I take on, I have to feel like I’m in it to win,” she said. “I’m not going to do something I’m not good at.”