How long has Harry Cobden been stable jockey to Paul Nicholls?
Harry Cobden was announced as stable jockey to Paul Nicholls at Manor Farm Stables in Ditcheat, Somerset in May, 2018, immediately prior to the start of the 2018/19 National Hunt season. Cobden succeeded Sam Twiston-Davies, who had replaced the previous incumbent, Daryl Jacob, four years earlier, but chose to go freelance in the face of increased competition for rides from the likes of Cobden, Bryony Frost and Sean Bowen.
A graduate from pony racing, Cobden was encouraged to pursue a career as a jockey by local trainer Ron Hodges, for whom he began riding out at the age of just nine. Cobden left school, at the age of 16, in 2014 and spent seven months working for Dorset trainer Anthony Honeyball before being offered the position of conditional jockey at Nicholls’ yard. In his first season at Manor Farm, 2015/16, Cobden rode 30 winners but, in 2016/17, increased his winning seasonal tally to 63 winners; he rode out his claim in early February, 2017 and subsequently won the conditional jockeys’ championship by a wide margin. With continued support from Nicholls and fellow West Country trainer Colin Tizzard, Cobden has pressed on with his career, riding 76, 109 and 83 winners in 2017/18, 2018/19 and 2019/20, respectively. His meteoric rise to the top of his profession has already included seven Grade One winners and he looks to have a bright future.
John Patrick McManus, almost invariably known in racing circles as ‘J.P.’, is an Irish billionaire, best known as the largest owner in National Hunt racing. At the last count, McManus had over 550 horses in training; in the 2019/20 National Hunt season, his familiar green and gold colours – ‘borrowed’ from his home Gaelic Athletic Association club, South Liberties – were carried to victory 79 times, earning £2.14 million in prize money and making him Champion Jumps Owner in Britain by £1.39 million.
The Finesse Juvenile Novices’ Hurdle also known, for sponsorship purposes, as the JCB Triumph Trial Juvenile Hurdle, is a Grade Two contest, run over 2 miles and 179 yards on the New Course at Cheltenham and restricted to four-year-old novice hurdlers. The race is staged annually, in January and, as the name suggests, is intended to serve as a preparatory race for the Grade One JCB Triumph Hurdle, run over the same course and distance, at the Cheltenham Festival the following March. That said, since the inception of the Finesse Juvenile Novices’ Hurdle, in 1985, just two horses have won both races. Indeed, Katchit, who did so in 2007, went on to win the Champion Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival the following year.