Bryan Cooper feature: On The Wire goes On The Road
By Racing TV
Last Updated: Sun 6 Sep 2026
On The Wire On The Road continues its three-part series around Irish racing, as Andrew Blair White sits down with a Gold Cup-winning jockey who has swapped the weighing room for the sales ring.
Bryan Cooper walked into Dessie Hughes's yard at fourteen and spent the first evening picking stones.
He recalled: "That was the first grounding I got when I walked in but as I always said, he's an incredible man. I would have been lost without him, he put me on my pathway for where I ended up in life and there's just very fond memories of Osborne Lodge and the Hughes family."
He was a stable jockey at eighteen and riding for Gigginstown at twenty-one, sitting across a table from Michael O'Leary asking for terms.
"I didn't appreciate it at the time, it's only now when I look back how very lucky I was and maybe I would have done one or two things a bit differently, but that's look that's part of life. I was very grateful to get the biggest probably job in jumps racing at the time."
He talks about the 2013 Cheltenham Festival treble, walking the track with Gordon Elliott on Gold Cup morning in 2016, and why he chose Don Cossack over Don Poli.
"He grew into himself and I remember watching him in Leopardstown upsides me that day and I said 'this horse is back to where he should be' and my mind was made up there."
Bryan shares about losing the Gigginstown job, retiring at Cheltenham after a fall when he'd planned to finish at Punchestown, and what nobody tells you about life after riding.
Now he buys horses for a handful of owners and helps his father at home in Kerry.
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