The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
AT PEACE WITH AT WAR The highs and lows in the life of Bryan
Few National Hunt jockeys have experienced the highs and lows of their sport quite like Bryan Cooper. He spoke to Stephen Fernane about the defining moments that have shaped him as a jockey and as a person
National Hunt jockey Bryan Cooper at his home in Tralee with At War, which is trained by his father Tom. In an interview in this week’s The Kerryman (pages 444 & 45), Bryan speaks about the highs and lows of what has been a very eventful career so far, with many more highlights yet to come.
THE scene is shortly after 6pm at Cheltenham on March 17, 2004. The last race of the day has just finished and crowds stagger towards the exit with discarded Racing Post pages and betting slips blowing like tumble-weed at their feet.
In the paddock area the evening sunshine throws a chilly spring glow over the winner’s enclosure where trainer Tom Cooper and members of the It’ll Never Last syndicate are ecstatic.
They have just witnessed Total Enjoyment make a mockery of the opposition in the Champion Bumper under a brilliant ride from Jim Culloty - a jockey who less than 24 hours later would enter the history books after winning a third Gold Cup aboard Best Mate.
Twelve-year-old Bryan Cooper, baseball cap turned backwards, stands on the podium beside his father. Standing behind Bryan, hand resting on his shoulder, is Culloty. What no one could have foreseen from that scene is that the passage of time would reveal two Cheltenham Gold Cup winners on the podium that day. Bryan’s boyhood ambition to be a jockey was set in concrete by that experience.
“It was definitely at Cheltenham with Total Enjoyment that got me interested. Being there watching that and experiencing the feeling with the crowds,” he recalls.
“I’ve said it to people that there is no better feeling than walking into that parade ring after a Cheltenham Festival winner. You can’t explain it. It’s not easily done and I’m lucky to have done it eight times.”
Bryan comes from a family steeped in horse racing tradition. His late grandfather, Desmond Cooper, knew a good horse when he saw one, while his father is a horse trainer who always produced maximum output from limited supply.
Bryan even carries the same name as a famous granduncle who used to ride his pony to Blennerville National School every morning, such was his love of horses. In the 1930s Brian Cooper left Blennerville to pursue a career as a jockey in the UK. He rode over 500 winners and later became a trainer based at the Curragh. At the 1955 Cheltenham Festival Brian rode Great Eliza to win the Broadway Novices’ Chase. But it wouldn’t be the last time the name ‘Bryan Cooper’ would ring out over the famous Cheltenham racecourse.
It’s incredible to think over 50 years after Brian’s Cheltenham win that the same ambition to leave home and become a professional jockey was to ignite in a relative of the same name in Kerry.
Bryan rode his first winner (Rossdara) in 2009 for his father before joining the late Dessie Hughes at 16. Dessie’s name was one of the first mentioned by Bryan seconds after his pulsating win in the 2016 Cheltenham Gold Cup with Don Cossack.
“Everything he had to say you listened to him. He was one of the most respected men ever to set foot on a racecourse. I’ve said it thousands of times before that I would never have achieved what I did only for him,” Bryan says of Hughes.
“He’s the one that put my career on the map and to ride a Cheltenham Festival winner for him (Our Connor) probably means more to me than any other. He would have been like a grandfather to me in the sense he looked after me when I first arrived in his yard. You don’t come across people like him that easily.”
Bryan’s record as a jockey speaks for itself - a multiple grade one winner who only narrowly lost out on becoming Champion National Hunt Jockey in 2015-16 having amassed an incredible 94 winners. He’s been there and done that in the sport, even if the famous line from The Specials’ song, ‘You’ve done too much much too young’ comes to mind.
Today, Bryan and trainer Paul Nolan are as good together as Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder something just gels between the two. In many ways they’ve helped hoist each other’s career back up to where it belongs.
“We’ve a lot of trust in each other and Paul knows he can depend on me in the big days,” Bryan says. “Paul and James (Paul’s brother) have trained multiple grade one winners, including at the Cheltenham Festival, so they know what to do when they have the ammunition.
“At the end of the day, Lewis Hamilton won’t be the number one Formula One driver if he’s driving a Fiat Punto around the place! It’s all about having good horses to ride - if you don’t have them, you won’t ride winners. You need a base and they’ve put in a lot of work over recent years building their team back up. At the time I didn’t have a base behind me so to have someone like them was great.”
Bryan’s brush with so many injuries - an occupational hazard in the business - throughout his career seems unfair when viewed in hindsight. From a lacerated liver and partially collapsed lung, to a fractured pelvis and concussion. However, a fall from Clarcam in 2014 tested his resolve like never before. A compound fracture to his right leg, tibia and fibula, was described at the time by Turf Club medical officer Dr Adrian McGoldrick as one of the worst he’d seen.
“It was tough as I was young at the time. I knew I had a very good job to come back to and I was looked after by some of the top specialists in England and Ireland. Having important people like that behind me was a help. It was the rehab work put in that was tough. It’s part of the game we’re in and it’s hard to explain to people who don’t follow racing.”
Everyone has an opinion about Bryan’s time as Gigginstown’s retained rider. Aged 21 when he took the job in January 2014, he came in under the shadow of Davy Russell’s controversial demotion and emerged from it his own man.
Michael O’Leary is no stranger to making the kind of cold, clinical business decisions that would leave Donald Trump looking like a shy piano teacher.
But it’s clear that Michael and Bryan owe each other nothing but mutual thanks. From Bryan’s impressive haul of 35 grade one wins (so far) 28 of them were in the Gigginstown silks. Bryan proved his worth immeasurably during his time in the O’Leary camp - a point often overlooked in some of the car crash analysis that followed Bryan’s demotion.
“I think they were getting very big at the time. When I was employed in 2014 they had over 120 horses. In that first year alone they spent massive money buying every point to pointer, they were getting bigger and bigger and had so many trainers. They probably got a bit too big for just one retained jockey.
“You’re never going to keep every trainer happy and everyone is entitled to their opinion. When I look back I had a fantastic career. Okay, the injuries were part of it, but in those four years there was never a major festival where I came away without a grade one winner. That’s what it meant to me - that I excelled on the days that mattered.”
So, how does Bryan reflect on that day in July 2017 when O’Leary called him for the euphemistic ‘cup of tea’ and a chat?
“It was tough as I threw all my eggs into one basket. I know that I put everything into riding for them and probably let go a few smaller trainers I would have been riding for.
“Obviously Dessie Hughes wasn’t around anymore. I suppose I expected it to be fine and things to fall back into place.”
He continues: “Unfortunately it took a bit more than that and I had to prove a few people wrong again. The game has changed now as there’s a jockey in every yard, whereas before the top three or four jockeys were always picking up grade one rides, that doesn’t happen anymore. It’s all about who is in the yard and who is working the hardest. It’s very competitive.”
In the years following Bryan’s departure from Gigginstown the rumour mill - as it often does in sport - kicked in. Things were said and written about Bryan as he struggled to re-build his career that he hasn’t forgotten. It changed his relationship with the media and he’s since vowed to block out negative influences in his life. Neither has the hurt or resentment eased with the passage of time.
“I still don’t talk to some of them to be honest. There is a certain amount of people that work for press that I wouldn’t speak to anymore, or answer the phone to,” he says.
“I’ve no bother with that, it’s just the way I am. If somebody pisses me off that’s it, they’re into the black book. There was a few things that didn’t need to be said. Fair enough, they have a job to do but at the end of the day if you have something bad to say about me, I’m not going to come back six months later and do an interview with you when you were cutting the back off me prior to that.
“That’s just the type of person I am. I’m a person that stands by my word. You don’t need them in your life as there’s plenty more people I can speak to.”
In July 2016 Cooper received a
Civic Reception from Kerry County Council for his Cheltenham Gold Cup win. In his acceptance speech that evening he nailed what it meant to win jump racing’s foremost race: ‘If I have a few bad days racing, I can look back and think that I’ve won a Gold Cup and
if I never again won anything, I can say that I’ve achieved that.’
Some bad days did follow for Cooper and true to script he had, and always will have, that Gold Cup to his name. To give one a measure of how exclusive the race is for jockeys, in the past 34 years 27 different jockeys have won it. It’s a once in a lifetime event for many.
“Don Cossack was a very classy horse. I still think he could have went back and done it again but for injury,” the Tralee man suggests.
Many felt the departure of Cue Card and Paddy Brennan at the third last meant one of Don Cossack’s main dangers was out of the race. Some still believe Colin Tizzard’s chaser would have won but for falling. It’s not how Bryan sees it.
“I wouldn’t say it for the sake of it, but we definitely would have outstayed Cue Card that day. He was going to get to the front at the back of the third last and all he would have done is give me a lead. If anything, I was left in front too soon. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I suppose he (Cue Card) was a bit of a people’s horse at the time.”
He continues: “Throughout the whole race everything went the way I wanted. He never made a mistake bar the fourth last when he landed out on his head a bit. But as soon as I landed he came back on the bridle again. I knew stamina was never going to be an issue and I was unbelievably comfortable the whole way around.”
The celebrations back home in Tralee came close to rivalling those at Prestbury Park that day. The bars and sitting rooms in the county heaved with tension as Bryan turned for home.
“I’ve looked back at the videos since and it was special to think that was going on,” he says.
“To me the Cheltenham Gold Cup is the Champions League Final and All-Ireland Final of jump racing. It is the biggest race that you can win as a jump jockey. To win it at such a young age I was very grateful to get the opportunity to do it. It’s a moment that you never forget.”
The Covid-19 pandemic means Cooper is currently back home in Tralee riding out for his father while awaiting a return to action. He says it’s keeping him “mentally and physically” in touch with the game.
Lastly, asking someone with Bryan’s CV what he hopes to achieve next seems mildly insulting. Yet he’s young enough to add more chapters to his story.
“To find the next horse that’s going to take you there is a challenge - a challenge I love doing at the minute. I suppose to get back to the winner’s enclosure at Cheltenham again, it’s been a few years since it happened. To add another win there to my CV would be great,” he says.
After all, Bryan has visited the famous winner’s podium multiple times since that star struck day as a 12-year-old. It would hardly come as a surprise to see him return there again.
There is a certain amount of people that work for press that I wouldn’t speak to anymore. If somebody pisses me off that’s it, they’re into the black book