Sam the royal matchmaker romps home to glory in the Grand National
...his greatest triumph since healing William and Kate’s temporary split 15 years ago
THE jockey who won racing’s most celebrated prize yesterday previously helped to reunite the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge during a break in their relationship.
Amateur rider Sam Waley-Cohen galloped home to Grand National glory at Aintree in the final race of his career on 50/1 outsider Noble Yeats, describing the experience afterwards as ‘a fairytale’. But it is not the first time he has been involved in a fairytale.
Before his victory, Sam was best known for bringing William and Kate back together when they temporarily parted in April 2007.
The 39-year-old, whose late brother Thomas was a friend of Kate’s, invited the pair to a socalled Freakin Naughty-themed party thrown at his family’s 17th Century mansion in Oxfordshire.
William wore hot pants and a policeman’s helmet, while Kate dressed as a ‘naughty’ nurse in fishnet tights and short dress. They were spotted deep in conversation that evening and, within a few weeks they were holidaying together in the Seychelles.
Mr Waley-Cohen was later invited to the wedding, while Kate and her sister Pippa attended his marriage to Annabel Ballin in 2011. The Cambridges were among the first to congratulate their friend on social media, tweeting from their official account: ‘Huge congratulations to @swaleycohen for winning the Grand National. What a way to retire!’
Mr Waley-Cohen, who also runs a dental business, has been careful to play down his role as the couple’s matchmaker. Speaking in 2011 he said: ‘There’s an idea that I was like Cupid with a bow and arrow. People love the idea that somebody put them back together, but they put themselves together far more.’
When asked by The Mail on Sunday yesterday if the magic touch that helped the
Duke and Duchess rekindle their romance had also helped him win the race, he replied: ‘I think living life with an open heart is a good strategy. I don’t think it has any connection to them, but as a general philosophy I think hoping for the best and living full of hope is a good way to live.’
Speaking about ending his career on a high note, Mr Waley-Cohen, who announced his retirement last
Thursday, said: ‘It’s a fairytale, a fantasy. There’s a lot of love and gratefulness. It’s getting on the right horses and getting the luck. You couldn’t make it up, could you?’
He celebrated his victory with his wife and three children – Max, nine, Scarlett, seven, and Alexander, two.
But the part-time jockey, the son of leading racehorse owner Sir Robert Waley-Cohen and his wife Felicity, daughter of Viscount Bearstead, insisted he would still retire, adding: ‘I said for ages that if I win the Grand National I’ll retire there and then – and give Dad my boots in the winning enclosure. Well, I gave my hat, but my boots are still on.
‘When you have a ride like that, you would be wise to stick to what you said. It’s been a magic course for me.’
Mr Waley-Cohen studied politics at the University of Edinburgh. He founded Portman Dental Care in 2009 and it now has 250 dental practices
‘A fairytale, a fantasy! You couldn’t make it up’ ‘I thought… It’s my last ride, just have a nice day’
in five countries. He once said that his idea for the business was a ‘light-bulb’ moment triggered by a joke made by sports journalist Clare Balding directed at a jockey with bad teeth. Empathising with the rider and blaming poorly run dental practices, he decided to start his own company.
Despite being an amateur, Mr Waley-Cohen has been more successful than many professionals and previously finished second in the National in 2011.
He is the only amateur to win both the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Grand National. He learnt to ride
on horses belonging to his father, who made his money by founding the company Alliance Medical in 1989, which he sold for £600million in 2007. But it was grief that pushed him towards racing stardom.
His brother Thomas, younger by two years, was diagnosed in 1995 with the bone cancer Ewing’s sarcoma and died in 2004, just days after his 20th birthday.
Mr Waley-Cohen immersed himself in racing to help him through the trauma, and has always used saddles stitched with Thomas’s initials in his brother’s memory.
After he helped reunite the Cambridges, Kate arranged a charity roller disco in London to raise funds for Tom’s Ward – a paediatric surgery ward at the Children’s Hospital in Oxford named after his brother. Mr Waley-Cohen was pictured helping her up after she landed on her back at the disco.
Mr Waley-Cohen has four Cheltenham Festival victories, including an unexpected 2005 win on his father’s horse, Libertine.
In 2011, he won the Gold Cup on another of his father’s horses, Long Run, where he beat Kauto Star and became the first amateur in 30 years to win the race. Further victories followed at the 2010 and 2012 King George VI Chase at Kempton aboard Long Run.
Speaking of his win on Noble Yeats yesterday he said: ‘It’s a dream! It won’t sink in for weeks – it feels like a fantasy.
‘He ran for me. He couldn’t go the early pace, and I was trying to find pockets to give him a bit of space to run into, and I found myself up the inner and I was going more forward than I wanted to.
‘He loved seeing his fences, so I kept trying to find a spot where he could see them. If I asked him, he came, but if I just half-asked him, he wasn’t confident, so I was really trying to sit against him.
‘He likes the bit in his mouth and your legs on him, so I was just trying to get him in that nice rhythm, and he just ran. As soon as I asked him, he went.’
He added: ‘I have to say thanks to Dad – he’s supported me unwaveringly, lovingly, when others said put someone else on. We’ve had a partnership, we haven’t had one cross word – it’s only been for fun. ‘We came here thinking, well, you know, the sun’s out, it’s my last ride, go and have a nice day with no instructions, no expectations, just enjoy. Today Liverpool comes out, Liverpool shows its love and, honestly, you feel like you travel on goodwill at this place.’
The Duchess of Cornwall, who joined 70,000 racegoers, congratulated the jockey and presented the Grand National trophy to his father.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge @KensingtonRoyal
Huge congratulations to @swaleycohen for winning the Grand National. What a way to retire!