Bryan Cooper’s stop-start climb towards the summit of Irish jump racing scaled a new crest on Sunday when he completed a Grade One double on Road To Riches and Lieutenant Colonel on the most prestigious card of the four-day Christmas meeting here. Both of his winners are now contenders for feature events at the Cheltenham Festival in March, when Cooper will expect to have a realistic chance in many of the week’s biggest races.
Cooper left last season’s Cotswolds festival in an ambulance, with his right leg badly broken after a fall on the second of the four days, and did not return to race-riding until October. By then he had been the retained rider for Michael O’Leary’s powerful Gigginstown Stud operation for nearly 10 months but available to ride horses for only the first 10 weeks.
Yet the 22-year-old has slipped back into the maroon and white silks as if he had simply been away for a fortnight in the sun and he started this meeting with a Grade One victory on Friday on Clarcam, the horse whose fall broke the jockey’s leg last spring.
He was excellent on both his winners on Sunday. First he delivered Lieutenant Colonel at the final flight to win the Christmas Hurdle on the five-year-old’s first start at three miles and forced him past Jetson, a horse who can be difficult to overtake when he has had his own way in front.
Then, in the Lexus Chase, the meeting’s showpiece event, Cooper had the confidence to allow Road To Riches, who is normally a frontrunner, to sit behind the early pace being set by On His Own. The gallop was not, perhaps, as strong as Cooper believed, as the first three in the early stages were still there at the winning post, but Road To Riches was ideally placed to exploit his turn of foot and beat On His Own and Sam Winner by one and a half lengths and two.
“He showed today that he doesn’t have to be ridden from the front and he showed that he stays,” Cooper said. “He answered all the questions.
“I knew I had plenty left but I didn’t want to get into a battle with Sam Winner from the second-last as that one is an out-and-out stayer. Our lad has a touch of class and it showed today.”
Road To Riches’ career to date has, like Cooper’s, suffered occasional setbacks but on his last four starts he has now won two Grade One events as well as July’s Galway Plate, one of the year’s most competitive handicaps, and is the second favourite for the Gold Cup in March with most bookmakers at a top price of 12-1, which leaves the 3-1 chance Silviniaco Conti, Friday’s King George VI Chase winner, as the only horse at a single-figure price for Cheltenham’s most important prize.
“He’s just never stopped improving since we got his diet right. From Punchestown [in April] on he’s not stopped improving all the time,” Noel Meade, the winner’s trainer, said. “He could be a little bit different. That was a good race today. I think it was every bit as good a race as the King George.
“There’s a lot of water to run under the bridge between now and Cheltenham. He has to stay sound, which is the most important thing, and we have to get him there in that sort of condition. If we do, he’s a contender.”
Road To Riches is also one of the few horses with any momentum in the market, as both Bobs Worth, the 2013 Gold Cup winner, and Lord Windermere, who edged out On His Own in a thrilling finish last season, failed to make the frame on Sunday.
Both were positioned well off the pace, which the final result suggests was not the ideal place to be. Bobs Worth, who was running for the first time since March, is now 20-1, while Lord Windermere is out to 16-1 to follow up last season’s Cheltenham success.
“It was hard work for him all the way but he has no form on that ground,” Barry Geraghty, Bobs Worth’s jockey, said. “I was happy with the horse but he’s just better with a bit of good in the conditions.”
Lieutenant Colonel, the first leg of Cooper’s double, followed up his win in the Hatton’s Grace Hurdle last month to give his trainer, Sandra Hughes, a second Grade One success after taking over from Dessie Hughes, her father, who died in mid-November.
The winner jumped with impressive accuracy and speed throughout race before staying on well under pressure to win by three-quarters of a length. He is a 14-1 chance for the World Hurdle in March, a price which makes rather more appeal than the 4-1 against More Of That, last season’s World Hurdle winner, who was a long way below his best when only third on his seasonal debut in November.
“This win means an awful lot to me,” Cooper said. “Fair play to Sandra and Bob Hennessy [her head lad] and Richard [Hughes, Dessie’s son] too, they’re doing a great job keeping things going.
“You have to remember this winner is only five so there’s probably plenty of improvement to come from him.
“We knew he’d stay. It was a proper true-run racein the Hatton’s Grace and he won going away. He’s not the quickest horse in the world. He doesn’t do anything quickly but I think there’s a lot of improvement to come.
“[The stiffer track at] Cheltenham wouldn’t bother him. You could sit on him a bit more and ride a race. He’d have a bit of boot around there and I think it would suit him.”
The final day of Leopardstown’s Christmas meeting, which is due to feature the latest duel between the top-class hurdlers Jezki and Hurricane Fly, is subject to an 8am inspection with frost forecast overnight. Monday’s card at Doncaster has already been abandoned due to snow while the jumps cards at Newbury and Kelso and Southwell’s all-weather Flat fixture also depend on early inspections with freezing temperatures expected.
