Can Waley-Cohen rise above latest criticism?

IT’S a familiar story in sport – the journey from hero to zero in a short space of time. Sam Waley-Cohen, last year’s Gold Cup winning jockey, is not the first to experience this unwelcome rollercoaster ride. Nor will he be the last.
By The Newsroom
Published 12th Mar 2012, 11:43 BST

As the talented amateur rider prepares for Long Run’s Gold Cup defence, he simply observed: “If I was really cynical, I would say people got bored of the fairy tale and maybe this year thought the nightmare’s the angle.”

Yet Waley-Cohen, whose only win since last year’s Gold Cup came when Long Run prevailed at Newbury last month, knows what it is like to experience a “nightmare”.

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It is not, he says, losing a horse race, but when you lose a brother to cancer at the tragically young age of 20, as he did with his younger sibling Thomas.

And while Waley-Cohen, who rides for his father Robert, is the first to admit that he has made mistakes – such as pulling up a circuit too early at Fakenham and trying to blame the horse swallowing its tongue in a failed attempt to avoid a 12-day ban – he could not be happier with Long Run’s preparation.

Despite two defeats to Kauto Star this season, the rider predicted: “I think there is more, and better, to come. To be mixing it with Kauto Star – I really hope he’s over his fall and runs on Friday – already puts you on the doorstep of the greats.

“I’ve probably watched last year’s Gold Cup and analysed it on video 100 times since, looking to see if there were things I could have done better – and I think there were.

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“The dream is not just to ride the winner of the Gold Cup but to ride a horse who made the Gold Cup his own race.”

That optimism is matched by those steeped in Gold Cup history. Barry Geraghty, the 1995-winning jockey, says the criticsm meted out to Waley-Cohen has been “disgraceful”. “He’s done nothing wrong,” he told the Yorkshire Post.

And Jenny Pitman, a two-time Gold Cup winning trainer, added: “The greatest thing in his favour is that he is a horseman – and that counts for far more than the number of wins. You can make a jockey out of a horseman but you can’t always make a horseman out of a jockey. The way he presents his horse at a fence, even as a young kid, there’s nothing wrong with him and I really hope he wins.”