Born in Ireland but trained and raced in England, Night Nurse was a hurdler who was known in the landscape in the 70’s. In 1972, the horse was sold to trainer Peter Easterby, who saw a potential career in horseracing for the bay gelding. At that point, Night Nurse could only fetch 13000 guineas for the sellers. Easterby was buying the horse for Reg Spencer and would go on to train the animal for almost all of its career. Night Nurse enjoyed a great career with Paddy Broderick, the Irish Jockey, on the saddles. Broderick was known for the long rein approach to racing, going on to establish a great relationship with the horse and working to ensure that this style was its correct fit.
Career
You could argue that Night Nurse simply wasn’t cut out for the flat racing thing, and the stats will show exactly that. At two years old, he went for the first 6 races of his career winless before scrambling for a single victory from the same number of attempts the following year. In 1975, after two seasons of trying and failing, he switched to hurdles, and this turned on the magic from his legs. It was clear from the first race that this was his sweet spot and he was ready to dominate. There was a spell between ’75 and ’76 where he ran amok, winning ten races on the spin. After winning almost everything in this category, Nurse became a steeplechaser, where he faired pretty averagely. At retirement, he had won classic hurdles in Wales, England and Scotland. He was rated at 182 by Timeform, which is the highest ever accolade given to a horse whose specialty was hurdles.
At the time of retirement, Night nurse had earned £174,507 from 35 starts on the tracks. He became a sire after hanging up his saddle.