Though she grew up riding—her mother, Jeannie Cook picked out her first pony when her daughter was in utero—Nicola “Nicky” Cook never aspired to become a professional groom. But when a teaching career didn’t pan out as she’d hoped, Nicky answered an ad in a local farming newspaper for a groom position. The caveat? It was at a Thoroughbred stud farm in Ireland, half a world away from her home in New Zealand. But Cook hopped on a plane, kicking off a career that would send her all over the globe caring for top sport horses. More than two decades later, she hasn’t looked back.

Leaving home to follow horses runs in the family: Jeannie moved at 16 to work at a pony breeding farm on the other side of New Zealand. When Jeannie met Cook’s father, they moved to his family’s sheep farm where they raised three daughters and a handful of ponies alongside their wooly flocks.

Nicky was the only one of the children who truly caught the riding bug, though. She grew up showing, participating in Pony Club, and hunting in the winter.

“Real hunting, not American hunting,” Nicky said. “Our ponies did everything.”

After graduating from high school and spending some time in Canada, she completed a teacher education program, hoping for a job in a country school so she could stay on the family farm and continue riding for fun. When she couldn’t find a job locally, and she didn’t want to teach in South Auckland, she said, “I ran away to Ireland.”

“The family was super nice,” she said of working at Ballymacoll Stud in County Meath. “Their kids were our age, and there were a lot of Kiwis, and it was like a big family. We went on holidays and traveled around the country. I think I’ve been to every stud in Ireland.”

But life at a Thoroughbred breeding farm lacked the excitement that young Nicky craved. The job largely entailed turning out the mares and young horses and doing stalls before bringing them in, and it grew boring.

She interviewed for a teaching job at a school in Ireland but wasn’t offered the position. If she wanted to teach, she was told, she should try London, where there were more available jobs.

“I’m not really a city girl,” she said. “That just wasn’t going to happen.”

So she bummed about Ireland for a few more years, milking cows in Tipperary, nannying a bit, and working at a boutique with a friend, until an ad in Horse & Hound for an eventing groom caught her eye.

The ad sparked a memory she hadn’t thought of in years: Seeing Mark Todd and Charisma after the 1988 Seoul Olympics, when his team toured around his home country of New Zealand, celebrating his individual gold medal and team bronze. Nicky remembered talking to Todd’s groom, Helen Gifford, intrigued by her tales of the team’s travels around the globe.

“I’m a Kiwi,” she said, laughing. “We’re on the bottom of the world and so far away from everything. All we want to do is travel!”

She was offered that first grooming job, kicking off an unexpected career. For four seasons she was an eventing groom at various barns in Ireland, learning the trade in real time.

“At one of the first events I went to, I had to put in a fake tail for the dressage. I’d never done that before, and it fell out in the warm-up,” she recalled. “I heard a nearby big-league rider say, ‘Sack the groom.’ ”

But thankfully, she found a veteran groom at her barn who was willing to show her the ropes.

“I had an older, experienced groom who became my mentor,” she said, “and I picked up so much from her, and from watching others at all different barns.”

Sometimes Cook’s only responsibility was to groom. But other times, she hacked horses out and even had opportunities to compete. 

“Looking back, I don’t know how I did it,” she said of the competitions where she was both groom and competitor. “I’d have half a dozen horses to groom, and I was eventing myself. It was a lot.”

Then tragedy struck. Nicky was working for 28-year-old Beijing Olympic hopeful Sherelle Duke of Ireland when Duke suffered a fatal fall on the cross-country course at the 2006 Brockenhurst Park Horse Trials (England). It shook Nicky to the core.

“It took me a long time to watch cross-country again,” she said.

Nicky thought she needed a break from the eventing world. She answered another ad for a show jumping position with Malaysian rider Syed Omar Almohdzar, who was living in Belgium and needed a groom for the Southeast Asian Games. Nicky was up for the adventure and traveled with the team for a month to Thailand.

Shortly after the SEA Games and the team’s return to Belgium, Nicky was hand-walking an injured horse in the indoor. It was Christmas Day, and she was chatting with her mom as she circled the ring. But suddenly the horse bolted, leapt forward then kicked back, breaking Nicky’s arm.

Casting the arm for six weeks was the prescribed treatment, but the bone didn’t heal as hoped. Two months later her arm was still giving her trouble, so she returned to New Zealand where she underwent surgery to put in supportive plate, followed by two months of rehab. 

While recovering, Cook searched for the next interesting position. She was itching to return to Canada, where she’d spent some time between high school and university.

“I applied for every single job in Canada,” she said. “But didn’t hear from anyone.”

That is, until she heard from Millar Brooke Farm, the home facility of Olympian Ian Millar and his daughter Amy Millar, now an Olympian too. Nicky took a position as Amy’s groom. When Ian’s former groom left after the 2008 Olympics, Nicky took over his horses.

“I did two [Florida seasons] with Ian,” Nicky said, “then ended up working for some other riders who needed grooming help at competitions.”

Those riders included Germany-based Irish rider Denis Lynch and his mount All Star 5, whom Nicky called “really special,” and whom she’d known and worked with as a young horse. But the travel and showing was getting to her, and she was starting to feel burnt out.

“So I took a home job at Mark Armstrong’s in England,” she said. “I refused to go to horse shows, but I kept everything fit and going at home.”

Nicky was also struggling with her old arm injury, as the plate was acting up. She returned to New Zealand to have the plate removed, and while she was stir-crazy in recovery from her second surgery, she interviewed to be a jet boat driver in Kawarau Gorge between Queenstown and Cromwell.

“I made it to the last two candidates” she said, “but they gave it to the other guy because he had more mechanical knowledge.”

Once the arm had healed, jet-boat-captain dreams aside, Nicky returned to North America and bounced around for a while, freelancing and grooming for different riders.

While in Wellington in early 2024, Nicky learned that Aaron Vale was looking for a show groom. Vale was excited about the possibility of bringing such an experienced and knowledgeable groom into his program.

“I knew that she had worked for lots of top people,” he said. “She’s been there and done it. From the beginning I just felt like I could trust her completely, and I have never felt like I had to be checking to see if she’d done this or that. I know that when I’m not there, she’s still doing things 100% how we want it, or sometimes even better than you’d actually do it yourself.”

Vale was making a run for the Olympics, so Nicky spent that summer in Europe with his team. Just recently, she returned from another overseas tour with Vale that included Rotterdam (the Netherlands), Aachen (Germany), Dublin and Dinard (France), where he and Carissimo 25 won the $582,280 Rolex Grand Prix Ville de Dinard CSI5*.

Nicky loves the adventure that comes with show grooming and doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon.

She’s learned something new about caring for horses at each of her stops around the globe, and she’s added those methods and tips to her ever-growing tool box to help her equine charges.

“I have seen so many different levels of turnout around the world,” she said. “And I truly believe that it’s best for horses to have as much as possible. When we travel now, I try really hard to make sure that the horses are out every day and look for places with turnout paddocks.”

“And I believe so strongly in getting horses out of the ring for their fitness work,” she continued. “We are close to some woods, and I love to take horses in there and do fitness, trotting around in there. When I ride them for fitness, I avoid the ring.”

Her final, and most important takeaway: “Anything you can do to keep them happy, you should,” she said. “You’re going to get a better performance in the ring from a happier horse.”