Syd Cole

Article by Chris Pitt

Sydney Newman Cole was born on June 27, 1938. He took out a permit to train in 1961, based at Woad Farm Stables, Newport Pagnell, and began combining riding and training his family’s horses alongside managing the family’s farm.

He owned, trained and rode his first winner when The Cockpit obliged at Fakenham on Saturday, September 19, 1964.

The Cockpit was not only the best horse he rode, but he was also well-named, because Syd’s other passion was flying light aircraft. He was placed on three other occasions on The Cockpit that season, though disappointingly finished last when returning to Fakenham on Easter Monday 1965, one of two rides he had that day.

He took out a full trainer’s licence at the start of the 1966/67 season and – in accordance with the rules then in place – became a professional jockey, amateur riders being forbidden at that time from holding a trainer’s licence.

He twice went close to landing his first winner as a trainer when Brig finished second in handicap hurdles at Ascot and Nottingham in October 1967, but he didn’t have much longer to wait before breaking the ice. La Music’s three-quarters of a length victory in the Fitzwilliam Selling Hurdle at Doncaster on November 24, 1967, gave trainer-rider Syd Cole his first win since turning professional. It was also his last as a jockey, although he held a licence until the 1972/73 season.

Syd continued to combine training with farming and also ran a helicopter business. At one time he was paralysed for nine months following a fall from a horse at a zebra crossing. 

In 1986 he left Newport Pagnell and moved to West Batsworthy Farm, Rackenford, near Tiverton, in Devon, where he continued to combine farming with training a string of around a dozen horses.

Syd Cole died of cancer in December 1999, aged 61.