Why Todd Pollard’s biggest advantage wasn’t his first winner - it was everything he learned beforehand

Cover image courtesy of The Image Is Everything

“It’s a bit of a ‘pinch yourself’ moment,” is how Todd Pollard described closing out the 2025/26 racing season with two stakes winners over the Queensland carnival, and a winning strike rate in excess of 22%. A Godolphin Flying Start graduate who had a ‘trial run’ for his training career as Annabel Archibald’s Queensland assistant trainer, the Kiwi expat only took out his license in February and has already hit the board nine times.

There is no straightforward formula to get winners, but Pollard has leaned on what he has learned under the tutelage of the Archibalds and Stephen Marsh to shape the way he thinks about his own stable.

Twice the excitement

Pollard put himself firmly in the spotlight at the Eagle Farm meeting on June 13 with Midnight In Tokyo (Kobayashi), a 6-year-old transfer from the yard of Annabel and Rob Archibald. Having her third start for Pollard, the mare picked up a well deserved second stakes victory in the Listed Hinkler Stakes, edging out Band Of Brothers (Omaha Beach {USA}) by a nose.

Midnight In Tokyo wasn’t a wholly new horse to Pollard, who spent almost five years working for Archibald as an assistant trainer, with the last couple of years spent running her Sunshine State satellite stable. At any point in time, Pollard oversaw up to 50 horses in training, including the daughter of Kobayashi who won the Listed Just Now Stakes in December as Pollard’s chapter with the Archibalds came to a close.

“I would have been happy to just have one over the carnival, so a second one is obviously a massive bonus,” said Pollard. “It’s proof that everything is coming together quite nicely at the moment.”

Zuleika (North Pacific), who struck for Pollard in Saturday’s Listed Tattersalls Gold Crown, arrived via a different path. The 3-year-old filly had been previously trained by Henry Dwyer and remained in Queensland after finishing at the tail of the field in the G1 Queensland Oaks for her former trainer. Placed in the Listed Tasmanian Oaks in February, she arrived in Doomben in April and picked off her first win in the state in city company before being set for the carnival.

After three unplaced runs for Dwyer at Group level, Pollard made the decision to bring the filly back in grade for her stable debut, and the trick paid off, despite the filly not being well favoured by the weights.

“We had a horse run in the race last year with Annabel, so it was a race on my radar as a good possibility for this filly,” Pollard said. “It is typically not an overtly strong race and we thought, with her stepping back from Group 1 company albeit running against the older horses, it would be a race she could run well in.

“I think some people looked at the field and gave us no chance, and maybe even thought us silly for running her in a race like that, given she wasn’t well favoured at the weights and her most recent win was a handicap. But we were confident enough in how the horse was going to have a go, and it worked out.

“I have learned that you can sometimes have a go at races if you are happy with how the horse is going, and sometimes it doesn’t work out, but fortunately for us, this time it did.”

Zuleika headed to the paddock after Saturday’s run as the first stakes winner for former Hunter Valley resident North Pacific. It also clocked in win number nine for Pollard, who has had less than 50 starters to date.

“We are all still relatively new as a stable,” Pollard said. “I think we are closing on 40 starters now, so two of them being stakes wins is really exciting.”

It is a good record to have achieved just three months after his first winner Subterrain (Territories {Ire}) who broke through for Pollard on March 25. Already a winner in the Archibald stable, the 4-year-old gelding - who also had been previously trained in Queensland - arrived fresh at the start of Pollard’s tenure and hit the board in both of his first two starts for his new master.

Finding the right run

What Pollard believes is key to the stable’s success so far is a skill he began to develop under fellow Kiwi Stephen Marsh, where he was racing manager for two and a half years, and further honed in his time with the Archibalds.

“Putting a horse in the right races with the right company is really important,” he said. “If you have a horse who is healthy and happy and feeling really good about themselves, they will run well for you, and it is important to not rush them to the races before they are ready. But it is also really important to place them as tactically as possible. Waiting for the right race to target is well worth it.

“You have to analyse every run very closely and try to think about where the next right race for that horse will be. There are always things you will get wrong along the way, but if you can put emphasis on placing the horse correctly, then hopefully you will make more right decisions than wrong ones.”

Placement is something Pollard feels very strongly about. In the case of Zuleika, he noted the step down in grade could assist the filly in facing off against older opponents and making her black-type breakthrough.

Marsh is someone that Pollard particularly credits for germinating this skill. Pollard arrived at the trainer’s Cambridge base fresh off of completing the Godolphin Flying Start, and dived headfirst into a role that combined time in the office with time trackside and within the barns themselves. In the 2021/22 racing season, when Pollard departed the stables for Australia, Marsh finished second in the trainers’ premiership.

Being part of the everyday decision-making process for each horse, and seeing the direct effects each decision had on a horse’s career, gave Pollard a clear window into how to set horses up for success with every start.

“He (Marsh) has obviously been a very successful trainer for decades, so learning from the lived experience of someone who has had a lot of runners over his career is huge,” Pollard said. “You definitely pick up things along the way, and it allowed me to see things from a different perspective.”

The greatest learning curve

The best thing for any aspiring trainer, though, is to get a ‘trial run’ in the hot seat - by being an assistant trainer to an organisation like Archibald Racing.

“Being able to come up to Queensland and run an operation of that size for the Archibalds was really the best way to learn to be a trainer,” Pollard said. “You have to make a lot of everyday decisions for yourself. They are there to bounce off of, but they are in a different state, so you need to be able to plan forward and adapt yourself to what is happening in the stable every day.

“There’s a pressure there because you are essentially training the horses without your name in the race book, so the results are important not only to you, but to them as well. It was a great learning curve before I went out on my own.”

Pollard noted it was a good apprenticeship to learn under two sets of trainers who had large numbers in their books.

“You see a lot of different horses working and racing, and you start to really realise how many different ways there are to go about things,” he said. “Everyone is a little bit different in their methods, and everyone is trying to improve all of the time.”

And the more horses Pollard sends to the races, the more he finds himself learning about what he can do to bring out the best in every runner.

“There is something you can learn from every run, something you can tinker with or try to improve ahead of next time,” he said. “Even the wins teach you things. If you aren’t changing something about what you do, you aren’t going to change - or improve - your results.”

Sometimes it is gear, sometimes it is work patterns - and for some horses, it has been as simple as a change of location.

Such has been the case for All Kinds Of Folk (D’Argento), who commenced her current preparation in Pollard’s care. A winner at the country level in Victoria, she kicked off her Queensland career with a provincial win in April and was most recently second at Doomben, a nose away from a metropolitan win on her record.

“You learn so much every day in this job,” Pollard said. “It’s always interesting to look back after each run and realise what component you might have been missing beforehand. Every day gives you something new to tinker with.”

Steady growth is optimal

Despite the success he has had so far, Pollard is in no hurry to grow his stable too big. He currently has 23 named horses on the books, and he has purchased five yearlings at the sales earlier this year. His biggest spend to date was laying down $80,000 in conjunction with John Foote Bloodstock (FBAA) for a Tagaloa colt from Yulong’s Inglis Premier Yearling Sale draft.

“We are starting to grow a bit more, but we don’t want to grow too fast,” Pollard said. “We don’t want to lose that hands-on touch. I still really enjoy being there in the stable in person, even doing something as simple as hosing a horse down after they have worked.

“You want to be close to the horses, where you can pick up all the little things about them and keep really on top of how they are developing. The babies are starting to come back in now, which is really interesting to watch, and it is good to get a handle on their temperament and how they are coping with being in the stable.

“You can miss that sort of thing if you get too big, too fast, you can end up too far removed from the day to day reality of the horses.”

There is the temptation to spend a little more as well - Pollard has made two Inglis Digital purchases to date, picking up well-related stakes performer Ikasara (I Am Invincible) and city-performed Navy Nina (NZ) (Proisir) this year - but Pollard has plenty of self restraint.

Gallery: Tried horses Todd Pollard has purchased on Inglis Digital, images courtesy of Inglis

“I still have that Kiwi nature where we are a bit on the conservative side,” he said. “We could look to be buying more and increasing the budget, but we are comfortable with where we are at. We bought a good number of horses, and we have syndicated everything so far this year. It is exciting to look forward to what we could buy at the sales next year.”

Pollard is, however, always looking to attract new horses to transfer into the stable.

“It's not always about buying the horses up here in Queensland, it’s also about having horses sent to you that aren’t making the grade in the southern states,” he said. “Hopefully people will be thinking of giving us a go now we have gotten off to a good start.”

And Pollard is not adverse to travelling his own horses south in the near future.

“It has given me an appetite to not only look around Queensland for the right races, but also to look elsewhere,” he said. “Whether that’s in Sydney or Melbourne, wherever the horses can be comfortable and happy and have the opportunity to win. If we hadn’t won those stakes races in our own backyard, then we might not be thinking about further afield just yet.

“To have two stakes winners from such small numbers is just an awesome way to start. The first one was brilliant, but the second one proves what we are doing is right.”