Kate Coppins with big goals for 2026

By Michael Guerin

Kate Coppins has set herself a personal best as her target for the new season and the way she has started 2026 she looks set to achieve it.

The 21-year-old made it three wins in just 10 drives so far in the new season when Shezabettorgirl bolted to a six and a half length win at the Cambridge meeting on Sunday.

Coppins added that victory to two others for the same trainer, Michael House, at Tauherenikau on Friday so after four days of the season she sits second equal to Blair Orange’s four wins on the premiership.

While she isn’t expecting to be knocking Orange off his perch anytime soon she is aiming for a serious upgrade on the 19 wins she drove her in breakout season last term.

“I have set myself a goal of 50 career wins by the end of the season,” says Coppins.

Right now she has 25 overall. 

“I have had really great support from my boss Arna Donnelly and obviously Dad (Phil) and Nana (Jill) and now I have been able to get on these horses for Michael House which is a huge opportunity.

“He does such a good job placing his horses and you know what you are going to get with them.” 

The young Waikato driver has been afforded that opportunity because her parents help look after House’s team when they come to stay in the north.

“They have been doing that for about four years and Dad has been at Michael for a couple of years now to let me drive some of them.”

But it is a win-win as Coppins has been on a steep improvement curve with more to come.

“I find driving at the meetings in the lower half of the North Island, like the other day, really good experience for me.

“You learn a different type of driving and I think it can be a good test of horsepersonship.

“You have to have goals so I set mine quite high this season but I am really keen to have a shot at it.

“It has started well but I know I won’t be able to keep this strike rate up.”

Coppins says Shezabettorgirl is far from finished winning too while Coppins’ form in the sulky is going to see her increasingly more sought after as 2026 proceeds. 

She was part of what may have been some sort of northern record on Sunday as Coppins was one of four female junior drivers to win on the same card.

While that is bound to have happened in the South Island it wouldn’t have been done in the north very often, if ever.

The other young female drivers to be part of the winning run on Sunday were Emily Johnson, who reined So Mystifying and Carolan Questro to an early double, Crystal Hackett partnered Viscount Mackendon to win the trot and Alicia Harrison won the main pace with a smart drive on Claude.

The latter headed home an all-female junior driver First4, which in itself would be extremely rare for an non-junior drivers race in the north, further proof the ranks of emerging young female drivers in the north have never been deeper.