Aidan Coleman: ‘I detest Twitter. If I was starting off again, I wouldn’t be on it’
COMING TO THE BOIL: Aidan Coleman celebrates after winning the Arkle Challenge Trophy Chase on Put The Kettle On at last year’s Festival. The mare runs in the Champion Chase on Wednesday. Picture: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
“ If you asked me for my absolute pet hate in life, it’s social media. What people say on social media, that they would never say to you and I, face to face. Every now and then, thank God, people write nice things. But sadly, most of it is... I think it’s sad.
“Emails are just as bad. People write you emails; you wouldn’t believe how many we get in the morning that are written in the middle of the night. You look at the time and you know. If it’s written at two o’clock in the morning there are a few bottles of wine involved.
“We have had a number traced since I reported it to the BHA, where I get a whole lot of unknown calls immediately after a race. I answered it once and I answered it twice, and it’s a guy saying, ‘You crooked bastard, you stopped that fucking horse.’ I just turned it off and now I don’t answer unknown calls.”
— Nicky Henderson, ‘The Irish Field’ (April 26, 2019).
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This week he revealed the contents of an email that he received after Monday’s racing at Wetherby. “You want to hope I don’t find out where you and that fucking scumbag [jockey] David Bass live,” it began. “[I’ll] smash a baseball bat over your heads! What a surprise your address is on here. See you soon.”
This is a regular occurrence.
“People can be very vindictive on social media,” Bailey says. “If a horse gets beaten there is nobody quicker than the keyboard warrior. I’ve had occasions where people have been unbelievably horrendous to me. I’ve had people say they are going to come down here and break my horses’ legs, break my legs and burn the stables down, all because some odds-on shot gets beaten.
“Invariably there is a good reason a horse gets beat, and welfare is the most important thing, but whether it’s five or £500 they are very quick to abuse when they are behind a wall.”
— Kim Bailey, ‘The Times’ (March 13, 2021)
Just a week after they had buried Gordon Elliott, the Twitter outrage mob had turned their attentions to Piers Morgan, and within a day had moved on again. It will be someone else tomorrow.
Nicky Henderson spoke to this writer two years ago about the increasingly pervasive blight on society, having been taken aback by the vehemence of the reaction surrounding his withdrawal of Altior from the Tingle Creek Chase the previous season.
Just like Henderson, Bailey has had the more direct communication. It is shocking to read such bile, yet it is commonplace.
For jockeys it is no different. Probably worse. God forbid they make a mistake. After a while, you know what sets the loons off and a quick search of a beaten rider’s name will give you a glimpse of the dark underbelly of Twitter. Facebook is no better. Instagram has become a target for racist abuse, as too many black soccer players are finding out now.
Aidan Coleman uses social media but only as part of his commercial responsibilities. He understands the benefits but believes the cesspit is no place for a young jockey.
“I despise Twitter,” says the Upton native. “After the all-weather bumpers in Kempton, the abuse I got after a couple of rides in that was absolutely… I’ve been getting abuse on social media for 10 or 12 years and even I thought it was a bit much! I’d say I blocked 30 or 40 accounts over those three or four meetings.
“If you’ve got a problem with me, call me, and if you don’t have my number, fuck off. I get there’s an upside to it but I would love to not have to be on it. On the Thursday evening after Paisley Park got beaten in the Stayers’ Hurdle, you’d soon see a different side to a lot of people.
“I don’t really mind it but if I was starting off again, I wouldn’t be on it. My advice to any young jockey is not to be on it. There is a perception you get rides from it. You don’t. Trainers and owners aren’t going to give you rides because you have a profile on Twitter. Now maybe I wouldn’t have the sponsors without it and they are why I’m on it now.
“I’ve been riding long enough now and I have no problem when I give a horse a bad ride, with someone telling me. When you ride as many horses as we do, it happens. So I have no problem someone asking: ‘Explain that?’ ‘Why did you do that?’ And you might get one do that out of a 100. But the other 99, it’s just dog’s abuse. A lot of people aren’t nice people in the world.
“If you’re on Twitter, you have to be able to stomach it. You have to brush it off.
“And then when you see the negative, top right-hand corner, block, block, block and you don’t see that again. I’m immune to it now. I think I have five or six hundred blocked accounts on Twitter. So it’s not absorbed. It’s just blocked straight away.
“There should be stricter protocols to get on it though. Nobody should be anonymous. But that’s the way it is.”
There is a new rhythm to Coleman’s life now, and it is an enjoyable one. For years, he had traversed Britain, north and south, east and west, totted up the miles and ridden all sorts. He had established himself as a reliable jockey, inched up the ladder, earning a living and increasing respect.
In time, he was a regular among the century club, making that ton of winners the measure of a successful campaign.
On more than one occasion, it seemed like he was on the cusp of hitting the real big time. He had to give up the ride on Cue Card due to other commitments, looked to have secured a plum retainer with the flourishing John Ferguson, only for that trainer to hand in his licence to run Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin operation.
But he kept grinding and the rewards have come.
Paisley Park provided a maiden Grade One and then the Stayers’ Hurdle the season before last, and he has ridden in excess of 1,000 winners.
This season, he was appointed first jockey by upwardly mobile trainer Olly Murphy, he moved up the JP McManus ladder with Barry Geraghty’s retirement and that, in turn, forged a stronger link with Henderson.
All of which means he goes into the four championship races at Cheltenham with chances of glory, and in at least two of them, major ones.
When the announcement was made that the ride on reigning Champion Hurdler, Epatante was his, he was still recovering from a broken arm that was not of the garden variety and sidelined him for 11 weeks.
It was quite an awkward one. I broke the top of humerus in four places and had a spiral fracture and that. It didn’t need an operation so people thought you would be back in a few weeks. But it ended up being a proper shoulder injury where the mobility and the movement and muscle and nerves were all affected and it still is to this day.
“I still get treatment on it several times a week. I still have to go to the gym three or four times a week to keep on top of it. It is an injury that I have to work with. If I don’t work with it, the mobility will just get worse. I won’t ride to the standard I should be riding.”
So, he has become a regular in the gym, which would never have been his natural habitat, but now he enjoys it.
It is all movement and stretching, to maintain the necessary suppleness around the shoulder joint and it is working well.
When he returned, he decided on a new approach.
“It is just shifting the focus. I’m getting to the stage where there is a lot more behind me than before me. Being injured and all that gave me time to think, to think about going forward, what are we going to do.
“2011 was my last significant injury before that. Which is a long time. The numbers have always been there. There was no reason to get off the wheel. If you are healthy you go racing and if you are asked to ride you ride. There was no reason to have a change of tack or approach to the situation.
“Then you are sitting at home and you are coming into the season proper. You are thinking: ‘What are we going to do?’ I spoke to my agent and my brother, Kevin (a former Galway Plate winner as a jockey who is now a trainer), and a few other people.
“I thought: ‘The numbers are gone, I have ridden over 1,000 winners. It doesn’t matter if I retire with 1,400 or 1,500. It is only a personal thing, only a number on a page, 100 winners a year has happened several times.
“Can I be champion jockey? I don’t think so. No matter how much I put into it, I think Brian Hughes or Harry Skelton or Sam Twiston-Davies or Harry Cobden will always be in a better position. Let’s try and go and commit to something rather than half-heartedly do one or other.
“That is what I have set my stall out on and that is why I am quite happy. I would prefer to be racing today with something with a chance. But at the same time if they are not then don’t be going down there for the sake of it.
I don’t see, at my age, where I will be driving up and down the country. Especially when the quality that I worked hard to build up is there. We got Epatante in the Champion, Put The Kettle On in the Champion Chase, Paisley (Park) in the Stayers’ and Santini in the Gold Cup. They are single-figure prices for the four biggest races of the year. What more do you want?”
It is, the 32-year-old agrees, his best book of rides ever at Cheltenham but there was much to look forward to last year too. Paisley Park underperformed when defending his Stayers’ Hurdle crown due to an irregular heartbeat that looks to have been consigned to history, while Chris’s Dream tanked along in the Gold Cup but didn’t stay.
The Henry de Bromhead-trained Cheltenham specialist Put The Kettle On was a 16-1 shot in the Arkle Chase but for all the big names, it was the mare that got Coleman on the scoreboard.
So you never know.
“They can all win and I wouldn’t be surprised if any of them individually won but all of a sudden they could all finish third and fourth and run extremely good races as well. There is no banker there as such. When you are riding in them quality races, you have got the best opposition in the world against you. It is great to be in them with realistic chances as well.”
There were comparisons with the first real stylist of jump racing, John Francome, as Coleman partnered Epatante to an easy victory in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at the end of November.
She did not replicate anything close to her best form when beaten by Silver Streak in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton however, though Coleman believes the winner was denied his deserved credit with the focus being on the champion.
It is Honeysuckle who presents the biggest challenge to her crown he believes, however.
“Even if Epatante had won the Christmas Hurdle, that performance in the Dublin Racing Festival was brilliant by Honeysuckle and that is why she is now favourite. When you have horses at this level that is going to happen. There is always going to be someone to take you on. Those races, the picture changes daily, never mind weekly or monthly. You need to try and get on the best one and stay on them.”
Many argue that Put The Kettle On should go for the new Mares’ Chase but Coleman reckons it would be foolish to do so, given her form at Cheltenham, the record of Arkle Chase winners in the Champion Chase, and the knowledge that she will get the lightning-fast pace that plays to her strengths. And if she isn’t good enough, she can return for the Mares’ Chase next year.
Santini, he reckons, will be in better nick than at any stage this year in the Gold Cup.
But Paisley Park is the sentimental favourite, for the public, and surely for Coleman, given the route they have travelled together.
Thyme Hill’s absence clears the path a little more for the champion to regain his crown, but he was favourite to do so anyway following his thrilling Long Walk triumph at Ascot by a neck over the young pretender, from an unpromising position.
“How he won at Ascot... I still can’t believe it but he did. But one thing this year, his schooling has been better than it has ever been. Even when he won the Stayers’ and he won his first Long Walk, he has never schooled like he has this year.
“He has never been as forward and bold and brave. It sounds silly and it is easy to say, whether he wins the Stayers’ Hurdle or not, I am fully convinced he is a better horse this year than last year or the year before. I think the form shows that too.”
The same could be said of the man on his back.
