The remarkable eight-month rise of teenager Shane Cotter from debutant rider to under-21 champion

First seasons in the saddle are not supposed to end this way, at least that's what history has taught us, but Shane Cotter shattered that lesson by winning the under-21 riders' title a mere eight months after starting his career.

The 17-year-old made his race-riding debut at Tinahely in October on a horse trained by Denis Murphy. It is perhaps telling that his first victory in December was on Special Prep, a horse trained by Willie Codd, father of the sport’s second most prolific rider, who had a long association with the Murphy team.

They had spotted Cotter's talent, but it is a remarkable feat to progress from a breakthrough winner to just under six months later being crowned champion under-21 rider.

And he did it by usurping reigning champion Dara McGill with a final weekend double to leave the score 15-13.
His title highlighted two strong elements of the season, and of recent seasons, beginning with the pull of Wexford as an attraction for young riders.

The Ballynoe rider has joined a growing number of his countymen seeking opportunities afforded to young riders in Wexford, which can claim to have one in three of all the season’s point-to-pointers.

Cotter was able to use the opportunities to get his name out there, which led to him catching the attention of David Christie.
Given the sheer number of open races now confined to novice riders, a yard like his, which dominates that division, is dependent on finding new riders for the category on an annual basis.

With the firepower potentially at their disposal, it is a golden opportunity for the chosen individual, as Cotter can attest to, having ridden six winners within a window of just over two months for Christie.

This is the case after the IHRB deliberately shifted many of the calendar’s novice rider races away from older-horse maidens to open lightweights, in one of the more positive initiatives in recent years.

This can be supported by the research conducted by Hartpury University and CAFRE College a number of years ago which identified older maiden races as exhibiting the greatest fall rate of any category.

Allowing these novice riders to gain their foundation in the sport on horses which have more experience and class than their counterparts in older maidens, is the perfect schooling ground for one of the pillars of what pointing stands for, and in this year’s champion, the fruits of that are there to be seen by this most remarkable of first seasons.

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