JOCKEY WHO WAS SCARED OF HORSES!
IF Definitly Red can win the Grand National in 13 days’ time, jockey Danny Cook will script another unlikely chapter in the history of the world’s most famous steeplechase. Put bluntly, Essex boys like Cook don’t usually become jump jockeys. Certainly not if they did not even see a horse in the flesh until they were a teenager, when Cook, by his own admission, felt ‘petrified’ on his initial equine introduction.
As a boy Cook used to pore over the Grand National runners and riders with his once-a-year racing mates. A week on Saturday, he will carry the colours of owner Phil Martin and partner the Brian Ellison-trained 14-1 second favourite in the £1million steeplechase.
To get there, Cook has cleared metaphorical career Becher’s Brooks, including broken limbs and, in 2015, a six-month ban after a positive test for cocaine which he described as a ‘catastrophic error of judgment’.
Nothing has stopped him fulfilling his dream of becoming a successful jockey.
It all started off with a massive swing of fate. As a 16-year-old, Cook wrote not only to the Northern Racing School at Doncaster but, on the insistence of his landscape gardener father Rob, the army.
If the army had replied first, Cook would almost certainly have signed up.
The Arsenal fan said: ‘All my friends and family are either plumbers, builders, electricians, landscape gardeners or window cleaners. I left school and worked for my dad. But I thought there was more to life.
‘I went to the careers’ office and said I wasn’t good enough to make it as a footballer but I’d watched racing a lot on television and that I’d like to be a jockey.
‘I’d never sat on a horse. When I arrived at Doncaster it was pretty much the first time I’d seen a horse in the flesh. I was scared of them. Trying to pick their feet out, I was petrified.
‘After the first four weeks, there was a review. I didn’t know whether I would be allowed to stay on or be told to go home but luckily they said I was improving.’
But gaining an unlikely foothold in racing for Cook was only the start. He had his first ride in August 2001 but a career in the saddle progressed at snail’s pace. There were times when, disillusioned, he headed back to Essex. They included a year out after his first job with trainer Jim Old and a similar period away from the sport after he had worked at the stable of Barry Leavy.
Cook, who will marry partner Kirsty in July, said: ‘I would work for a few months doing the landscape gardening and then think “I can’t do this for the rest of my life”. I wanted to be a jockey but when you’re young you’re impatient.
‘Family and friends would say “Why are you doing this?’’ and my dad said it was a waste of time. But he still supported me and now he is very proud of what I have achieved.
Obviously some faults I have made myself but I just wanted to ride in a race to prove everyone wrong.’
The turning point for Cook was joining trainer David Pipe as a stable lad, a final shot in a big yard that the jockey felt he owed himself.
Within six months had his first ride as an amateur. In 2008-9, his 22 winners were enough to finish second in the amateur jump jockeys’ title race — and he enjoyed his biggest win, the 2010 Byrne Group Plate, on Pipe’s Great Endeavour.
An offer to ride for owner Dan Gilbert led to Cook moving to Yorkshire where he now rides for Ellison and, principally, Sue and Harvey Smith. It has been the best move he has ever made.
Three short of a maiden 50 winners in a season, the in-form jockey has ridden nine winners in his last 18 rides.
Definitly Red, well handicapped for Aintree after slamming 2016 Grand National runner-up The Last Samuri in the Grimthorpe Chase at Doncaster this month, will be Cook’s second National ride after he fell at the second fence on Pipe’s Pablo Du Charmil in 2010.
Cook said of Definitly Red: ‘I think the world of him. He is by far the best horse I’ve ridden. In my opinion, he would not be far behind in a Cheltenham Gold Cup. If I do my job and we have a clear round, he won’t be far away.’
A jockey proven at overcoming obstacles will be hoping for much better in his second shot at the National on April 8.
His friends back in Romford, who know what he has done just to get there, will be cheering him on at Aintree.