Price Closes in on Her First ‘Tonne’
It’s been a big year for a few South Australian trainers and one of them is the Lewiston based Nicole Price, who is closing in on her first ‘100’ winners trained in a year. Currently sitting at 99 she has just a few weeks to get the job done. Nicole has enjoyed her most successful year yet, after making a life changing move closer to the city of Adelaide two years ago, having previously lived and trained in Renmark for twenty years. The Renmark to Adelaide journey is not a short one and was quite taxing when Nicole would make the trip multiple times a week with her smaller team of dogs. The travel was wearing Nicole down and that is when her and the family made the decision to look for a property in Lewiston, which has the three main South Australian tracks close by.
“As I started to increase my kennel size and was doing 2-3 trips a week up and back, mentally I couldn’t do it anymore, so it was either we moved, or I stopped.” Said Nicole
“We spent two years searching for a suitable home and when this fourteen-acre property came up, we bought it.”
The property was built for horses therefore she had to ‘start again’, something that is not easy to do in current times with the increasing cost of materials.
“We had to start from scratch again. We had to build a brand new kennel house, runs, paddocks, straight track, pretty much everything.”
“We got 70 wins in the first year which I thought was huge because it was a disaster here with setting up the property.”
The situation is still tough as Nicole’s husband, Linton hasn’t made the move from the Riverland due to work, meaning setting up the property can only be done on weekends. Nicole does most of the work with the greyhounds herself, having originally had help from her daughter while she was completing year 12. She is now a qualified beauty therapist and works fulltime, therefore Nicole was required to find a young worker to come in and help with the everyday chores.
“I get up around 6am and try to be inside before midnight. The hardest part is that I’ve just got to make it work whether we have day or night racing.”
Nicole is supported by some fantastic owners, whilst she also breeds her own dogs too. Currently she has thirty dogs on the property which are an even mix of pups and race dogs.
“This year we’ve been breeding and setting up. Next year our plan is to race a larger number of dogs.”
Some of the better dogs that Nicole has trained this year have included Patched and Enthusiastic, who are owned by one of her loyal owners, Steve Williams. With those dogs getting older, it’s exciting for Nicole to have a couple of promising young ones who have just started their careers, like Pink Confetti, Arrested and Velocity Tahnie.
“The biggest thing with our kennel is that everything that races is consistent all year, each dog is a star in their own way. Obviously Enthusiastic has been great but he’s getting old now and he’s injured his achilles three times. Patched hasn’t put a foot wrong since arriving and all these new pups are doing well.”
The success of Nicole can be a motivation for other aspiring young trainers, who may think it is too hard to start new and build up to accomplish achievements like this. Patience, resilience, and hard work are important attributes for any greyhound trainer, and these qualities have certainly helped Nicole get to where she is now.
