Talking Horses: Bryan Cooper starts his new chapter with Ludlow rides

The new link with Alan Potts gives Cooper access to a string of proven and potential Grade One performers, and he starts with two rides at Ludlow

Bryan Cooper’s satnav is going to be busy over the coming weeks and months, as he works himself into his new role as Alan Potts’s No1 rider in Britain and finds his way to some of our more remote jumping outposts. It is Ludlow on Wednesday afternoon for two rides, then hopefully Chepstow on Saturday for the fencing debut of Finian’s Oscar, after which he can start chalking off tracks like Taunton, Hereford and Wincanton, three courses at the heart of west-country jumping where Cooper has yet to set foot.

Few, if any, jockeys taking up a prominent role in National Hunt racing in Britain in recent years can have done so with so little experience of the wide variety of challenges it presents. In all, Cooper has had 158 rides in Britain in his career with 17 winners, but 10 of those wins were at Cheltenham and four more at Aintree. His only other British winners have come at Sandown, Newcastle and, less than a fortnight ago, in a bumper at Market Rasen.

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from The Guardian http://ift.tt/2zdXv43