Harry Cobden will become the new number one rider for leading owner JP McManus in Ireland and Britain from next season.<\/p>\n
Champion jockey in Britain in the 2023\/2024 campaign and currently stable jockey to Paul Nicholls, Cobden is expected to start his new role in May.<\/p>\n
Speaking before racing at Hereford on Monday, Cobden, 27, told Sky Sports Racing: “It’s a massive opportunity for next season and obviously I\u2019m very much looking forward to it.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s obviously nice and a privilege to be asked. It\u2019s a huge position, they\u2019ve got lots of very good horses and I\u2019m looking forward to it.<\/p>\n
“Ireland is obviously where the majority of the green and gold horses are. There\u2019s lots of quality there, it\u2019s great.”<\/p>\n
Cobden was keen to praise 14-times champion trainer Nicholls for the part he has played in his career to date and insists his “primary focus” is on doing as well as he can for his current boss before his new role begins.<\/p>\n
He added: “I\u2019ve really had one job in racing and that\u2019s with Paul Nicholls, so I wouldn\u2019t be where I am today without him.<\/p>\n
“The support I\u2019ve had off him and his owners over the last 10 years has been unbelievable and without them an opportunity like this wouldn\u2019t have come along because nobody would know who I am.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019d just like to say a massive thank you to Paul and all his team because I\u2019ve had the most fantastic 10 years there and fingers crossed I can still ride plenty of winners for them.”<\/p>\n
Mark Walsh has been McManus\u2019 chief rider in Ireland since Barry Geraghty\u2019s retirement five years ago, but Cobden looks set to take over that role as well as being the owner\u2019s go-to man in Britain.<\/p>\n
When asked whether he plans to have a base in Ireland, Cobden added: “I don\u2019t know, we\u2019ll take it as it comes.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s obviously a big opportunity and one that I\u2019m very much looking forward to, but I suppose my primary focus between now and the end of the season is to not leave anything behind and do as well as I can on all of Paul\u2019s horses and ride as many winners as I possibly can.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Harry Cobden will become the new number one rider for leading owner JP McManus in Ireland and Britain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-241768","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}