Megan Nicholls will be front and centre for ITV racing at the Cheltenham Festival having transitioned from jockey to pundit
Megan Nicholls will provide analysis for ITV Racing once again at the Cheltenham Festival this week. The 27-year-old is the daughter of perennial champion trainer Paul Nicholls.
The action from Prestbury Park will soon get underway as punters flock to the high point of the National Hunt season. Over 200,000 were in attendance across all four days of the Festival last year.
For those who won’t be heading to the Cotswolds, ITV will provide its usual coverage on every day of the meeting. Former Flat jockey Nicholls will be one of the broadcaster’s brightest stars.
She retired from a career in the saddle at just 25 to focus on media and has since become an ITV staple. We take a look at her iconic racing family and her former and current flame.
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Nicholls’ father, Paul, is an iconic figure in the National Hunt sphere. He has been crowned Champion Trainer a staggering 14 times, operating out of Ditcheat in Somerset. He has trained over 3500 winners and has won the Cheltenham Gold Cup on four occasions, training some of the game’s greatest horses, including Kauto Star, Denman and Big Buck’s.
Nicholls followed in her father’s footsteps to some degree and became a jockey, but she rode on the Flat, tallying 110 winners. Her sister, Olive, is an amateur National Hunt rider.
In 2022, at the age of 25, Nicholls decided to leave her riding career behind to focus full-time on bloodstock and the media. She made her ITV Racing debut in 2021 and hasn’t looked back.
Explaining her decision, she told the Racing Post: “I felt my riding career had hit a point where I was going back down. Unfortunately, not everyone is blessed with natural talent and you can work as hard as you want, but when you have people ahead of you it’s hard.”
Since her first appearance, Nicholls has often starred alongside the likes of Ed Chamberlin, Mick Fitzgerald and AP McCoy for ITV. She also features on Racing TV.
While she has left the riding behind, Nicholls did continue with a high-profile relationship after her retirement. She dated Group 1-winning jockey Kevin Stott.
The pair met while riding out in Dubai and they began seeing one another in late 2019/early 2020. Stott had previously had a trial with Premier League side Tottenham but reverted to riding after this footballing ambition fell apart.
Nicholls and Stott dated for two years before their relationship ended. Now, if social media posts are anything to go by, she may be seeing up-and-coming jockey, Tristan Durrell.
Durrell landed one of the biggest winners of his young career earlier this season when he steered the Dan Skelton-trained Panic Attack to Coral Gold Cup glory. Pictures of Durrell and Nicholls on dinner dates are commonplace on the ITV star’s Instagram.