Bryan Cooper is expected to miss the first two months of 2017 after cracking his pelvis in a fall at Punchestown on Saturday. The leading Irish jockey, who has been beset by repeated injuries, was unseated five out and landed flat on his back after Arkwrisht jumped awkwardly in the opening beginners chase.
While Cooper was taken to hospital for examination, the early expectation was that the 24-year-old had escaped serious injury. But Adrian McGoldrick, the Turf Club’s medical officer, eventually offered the bad news. “Unfortunately a CT scan has confirmed Bryan has a fractured pelvis,” McGoldrick said. “He will be out for six to eight weeks.”
Cooper had been in Grade One-winning form just two days before the Punchestown incident, when he landed Leopardstown’s Ryanair Hurdle on Petit Mouchoir. But his 2016 has been punctuated by spells on the sidelines, as he missed August with a lacerated liver and a collapsed lung, while a broken arm put paid to most of October.
Two years ago, Cooper missed seven months after a broken leg sustained at the Cheltenham Festival, which McGoldrick described as “the worst fracture I have ever seen in a lower limb”. Cooper also broke a leg in 2013 and missed four months.
Cooper is the principal jockey for Michael O’Leary, whose Gigginstown Stud’s maroon colours are now likely to be worn even more often by the 17-year-old Jack Kennedy, winner of the Lexus Chase aboard Outlander on Wednesday.
