Manami Nagashima didn’t score any points during the 2025 Diriyah International Jockeys’ Challenge in Riyadh, but it was by no means a pointless exercise for Japan’s leading female jockey.
The Saudi IJC came on the eve of the US$20 million Saudi Cup and brought with it that bit of international exposure and top-level experience against unfamiliar rivals that any young jockey could do with.
She was in pretty good company: alongside her at the bottom of the table with zero points after all four races had been run was U.S. Hall of Famer John Velazquez. The event at King Abdulaziz Racecourse that day also pitched her against international stars Christophe Soumillon, Oisin Murphy, James McDonald, Hollie Doyle, and Rachel King.
“These were races with top jockeys from all over the world: just by riding with them I was able to watch their riding techniques, and I was able to ride on a racecourse that I’ve never ridden before. I feel like I have earned a lot of experience from this,” she told Idol Horse after the last of her rides in the four-race challenge.
Nagashima, 22, is pleasantly-spoken, polite, and smiles warmly. In her spare time, she said, she likes to cook. Her cuisine of choice is anything Japanese.
But don’t be fooled, race-riding is in her blood. She is hard-working and tenacious, the middle of three daughters of former Sonoda-based NAR (National Association of Racing) jockey Taro Nagashima. Ten years ago she was riding in the Kansai region qualifiers for the famed ‘Jockey Babies’ pony races. Three years later she joined the JRA school.
Nowadays she is proving her merits on the JRA (Japan Racing Association) scene and her Saudi adventure, she hopes, will have helped her continuing development as the fourth anniversary of her very first JRA ride comes into view on March 6.
That debut fourth-place at Kokura meant that she was the first new female to be licensed from the jockey school since Nanako Fujita five years before. Nagashima went on to ride seven winners in her first season and 21 in her second. Since then, she has accelerated her returns and in July 2024 became the second female jockey, after the now-retired Fujita, to reach 100 wins.
Yet for a time she was in the shadow of the year-younger Seina Imamura, who was a sensation in her first season and holder of the JRA record for most wins in a season by a woman, 51, in that 2022 debut campaign.
Imamura’s shooting star has sputtered in the last year and a half, though, and Nagashima came close to the record when she bagged 50 wins in 2023. That leaves the question of what might have been had she, along with Imamura and four others, not been suspended for 30 days in May of that year for using their outlawed Smartphones during the jockey lockdown period from Friday evening to Sunday evening?
Nagashima had 32 wins in 2024, has four wins on the board this term, and is conscious of the improvements she needs to make as she works through the transitional phase all jockeys must figure out, of a reduced claim and of losing the apprentice claim completely to compete as a fully professional jockey.
“I started out claiming four kilograms, but if you always ride like you are claiming four kilograms in your career you will never get good results. So, I think right now I have to do a lot of trial and error to learn how I should ride,” she said.
“Like at what position you should be at the final corner, or at what timing you should start to move. As I claim less weight, I have to rethink when to move during the race, and the correct position is completely different. I have to reconsider all of these things.”
In the past she has cited as influences the great Yutaka Take, and a rider like herself and her father with NAR Hyogo Prefecture roots, Yasunari Iwata, but she has received guidance in her career from two other high-profile riders.
“Recently I have been asking Ryusei Sakai and Yuga Kawada a lot about riding techniques,” she reveals.
It was last June that Nagashima earned a first Group race win, the G3 Mermaid Stakes on Alice Verite, and the aim is to achieve more success in those higher grades. After her Riyadh rides, that ambition has taken on an international scope.
“Now that I have experienced racing in Saudi, I want to become a jockey who can perform well not only in Japan but also globally,” she said. “To achieve that I need to work harder.” ∎
