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Harry Cobden’s appointment as no.1 jockey to champion owner J P McManus completes a rise that started on ponies in the hunting field.
Born on Bonfire Night in 1998, he was fearless over some of the Blackmore & Sparkford Vale’s biggest fences, went on to compete in pony racing, and then, a month after his 16th birthday, made the logical progression to point-to-pointing.
Cobden, aged 15, after riding in a Pony Racing Authority race at Newbury (Ce)
Making his debut at Barbury Castle in December 2014 he pulled up on El Mondo, and the following month when riding Cock Of The Rock for South Wales owner/trainer David Brace at Wadebridge, the horse slipped up on a bend. It was an inauspicious start to a very productive partnership.
Cobden’s parents subsequently bought Cock Of The Rock and put him into training, in their son’s name, nearer to their home with Dorset trainer Rachael Honeyball, whose husband Anthony is a licensed trainer.
On his third ride, which came at Chipley Park in Somerset, Cobden rode his first point-to-point winner when teaming up with the Honeyball-trained Silver Token, a horse who provided him with three more victories in the coming months, and at Leicester in March 2015 he landed his first hunters’ chase on 33/1 shot El Mondo. Alex Edwards, who went on to become national men’s champion a couple of seasons later, finished second, while current professional jockey Charlie Hammond was in third.
Showing professional style, Cobden, 16, winning on Cock Of The Rock in the 2014/15 season (Ce)
A week later Cock Of The Rock won under Cobden at Larkhill and the partnership became unbeatable in the spring, scoring six more times and carrying the teenage rider to the national novice men’s championship with a total of 13 victories. He also won the PPORA’s Wilkinson Sword, while Cock Of The Rock’s seven victories meant he collected the Connolly’s RED MILLS leading horse award.
Paul Nicholls had been notified of Cobden’s promise well before he was ready to become a professional jockey, and he duly joined the trainer, going on to win the conditional jockeys’ title in 2016/17 with 63 winners and the senior professional jockeys’ championship in the 2023/24 season with 164 winners. In October last year he rode his 1000th winner under rules, having gained top level success in such races as the Fighting Fifth Hurdle, Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle, Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase (former RSA Chase) and King George VI Chase.
Completing the accolade of the McManus appointment is that Cobden will apparently have the pick of rides on both sides of the Irish Sea, a role last held by the outstanding Irish jockey Barry Geraghty who retired in 2020. That will see Cobden riding not only for trainers based right across Britain, but also for heavyweight Irish trainers such as Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott and Gavin Cromwell and on horses trained in France by Noel George and Amanda Zetterholm.
It promises to be a lucrative position, for McManus’s horses have won just over £10.4m in the past five years in Britain and Ireland, and Cobden will be able to ride other horses too. The pick of those on promise is the ex-British point-to-pointer No Drama This End, trained by Nicholls, a three-time winner this season and a serious candidate for Cheltenham Festival success in March.
