Tony McCoy’s relentless desire for success has led him to the brink of 3,000 winners and at the age of 35 he is showing no signs of retiring
THE FIRST PONY bought for a then nine-year-old Anthony Peter McCoy was possibly the last horse ever to get the better of the most successful jockey National Hunt racing has ever seen. Rejoicing under the name of "Seven Up" – a reference to the average number of times her young rider fell off in a session – the pony left as indelible a mark on McCoy's memory as she did on his breeches.
"She was a dark chestnut with thoroughbred looks – and an absolute cow," he later recalled.
It's no surprise that the 13 times champion jockey still remembers his childhood nemesis. Whereas most kids would have parked Seven Up in a stable and searched for a less onerous hobby, the boy growing up in Moneyglass, Co Antrim simply got more determined with each unsuccessful attempt to master his pony.
It's that stubborn streak that has helped him re-write the record books in the most punishing sport of all, where injury is inevitable and disappointment is always waiting to trip you up on the other side of the next fence.
In the 17 years since McCoy rode his first winner, Legal Steps at Thurles on March 26th, 1992, he has broken legs, arms and vertebrae as well as fighting a constant battle with weight in order to tip the scales at little more than 10 stone (63.5kg).
It is a regime that has broken many champions of the past. But shortly an unsuspecting horse will achieve statistical immortality by passing the post to become McCoy's 3,000th winner over jumps, marking the latest milestone in a career that has pushed racing's boundaries into new territory.
McCoy's nearest rival on the all-time table of jump jockey winners, Richard Johnson, is more than a thousand behind his colleague. Ranged even further behind, like statistical flotsam, are legendary names such as Richard Dunwoody, Jonjo O'Neill and John Francome. All of them have admitted they have never seen anyone like McCoy.
"Like Lester Piggott, he is a one-off. He is a genius," Frankie Dettori once declared.
The winning-most jockey in the history of British racing is Sir Gordon Richards, who ended a famous career on the flat well into his 50s with 4,870 winners. McCoy is now 34, an age when jump jockeys usually start to contemplate retirement. But already there are suggestions that the Irishman could yet make 4,000 before he eventually decides to hang up his boots. Certainly only the brave will be willing to give short odds on him not doing it.
BEATING THE ODDS is something that has become second nature to McCoy. Unlike his great friend and rival Ruby Walsh, he is not a product of a renowned racing family, nor is he from an area steeped in racing. Growing up in Antrim during the Troubles meant little to McCoy. He subsequently described an attitude of "detached interest" whenever an incident occurred in the locality. The same comment initially also applied to horses.
His father Peader, a carpenter, liked to breed horses and subsequently produced a Cheltenham festival winner in Thumbs Up. However, it took time for Anthony McCoy, one of five children, to start sharing his father's fascination.
But when local trainer Billy Rock allowed the boy he famously referred to as "wee Aunthany" to ride racehorses, his career fate was sealed.
At 15, McCoy left school and became an apprentice jockey to the leading trainer, Jim Bolger in Co Carlow. As a racing academy it couldn't be topped. At the same time, other young talent at the Bolger stable included Paul Carberry and Seamus Heffernan as well as another youngster with the initials AP, a certain Aidan O'Brien.
McCoy more than held his own in the pecking order and impressed Bolger, a hard taskmaster, who started to give him rides on the flat. However, any hopes of becoming the next Mick Kinane finished in early 1993 when the young apprentice broke a leg in a fall on the gallops. It took months to heal during which time both his height and weight shot up. A year later he arrived in Britain determined to make it as a jump jockey.
He joined the Grand National winning trainer Toby Balding and despite a minimum of experience over steeplechase fences he quickly started making an impression, even if at first it wasn't entirely positive. Balding later recalled McCoy's first ride for him over fences: "It was awful to watch. The horse nearly lost him at every fence. But he still won. He never stopped digging away."
It was this determination that helped him win the 1994-95 conditional championship and just a year later he landed the championship proper. He has yet to finish a season in Britain without topping the table. Much of the ammunition came from the multiple-champion trainer Martin Pipe, whose own comparative outsider status within the racing industry mirrored McCoy's. Together they became unstoppable.
In 1997 McCoy became just the fourth jockey to complete the Champion Hurdle-Gold Cup double at the Cheltenham festival. 2002 saw him finish the season with a mammoth 289 winners, still a record. Later that year he became the world's winning most jumps jockey, beating Richard Dunwoody's old record of 1,699.
Like Dunwoody, his childhood hero who is also from Northern Ireland, McCoy can cut a severe, almost austere figure out of the saddle. The struggle to keep his weight down, and ride almost two stone under what would be regarded as normal, is etched on a hollow-cheeked face and he remains jaw-juttingly focused on riding that next winner. He admits to being addicted to the feeling of winning and terrified of that flow of winners ever drying up.
"The fear has never left me. If I ride three winners in a day, then draw a blank on the next, I get withdrawal symptoms," he said. "What's more, I'm no more confident if I ride 10 straight winners because I think the 11th will lose. I'm a natural pessimist."
Friends paint a different picture though. McCoy is a teetotal non-smoker but away from the track he can let his hair down and is a popular figure in a notoriously hard but fun-loving profession. Marriage to Galway-born Chanelle Burke, and the birth of their now 14-month-old daughter Eve, has made him happier, he says, but no less hungry for the job.
In 2004, lured by a reputed £1 million-a-year (€1.08 million) contract, McCoy left Pipe to become JP McManus's retained jockey. The legendary owner-gambler looked like providing the quality to complement the still raging thirst for winners but the move also coincided with the inexorable rise of the Somerset trainer Paul Nicholls, whose number-one jockey is Ruby Walsh.
Opinion as to whether Walsh or McCoy is the better jockey has provided some entertaining if ultimately pointless debate in recent years.
Despite the rivalry, however, the pair remain good friends. "He's a rotten cook and even though he thinks he's great at golf, he isn't," jokes Walsh. "But he's a good lad."
THE McMANUS link looks like it could really pay off at Cheltenham in March as McCoy is set to ride Binocular, who is currently a red hot ante-post favourite for the Champion Hurdle. He has won that race twice already and almost every major prize has at some point been picked up by the Irishman.
A glaring omission from McCoy's CV, however, remains the Grand National. His famous will-to-win hasn't been able to crack the code to Aintree success.
In 2001 he was convinced Blowing Wind would win but that was the year that only two horses didn't fall on desperately testing ground conditions.
He remounted Blowing Wind to finish third. In 2005 Clan Royal was leading when a loose horse brought them to a halt at Becher's Brook. McCoy has admitted he will consider it a failure if he doesn't eventually win the world's most famous race.
How long he will have to put that right remains open to question. In the past he has considered 35 a good time to retire but as that birthday looms, most insiders believe he won't call time on a remarkable career.
"Why should he?" asks his friend and former jockey, Mick Fitzgerald. "He will still love it as much as ever and he will still want to win as much as ever."
That seems almost certain. As 'Seven Up' discovered years ago, there appears to be no limits to the mental toughness and physical resilience of jump racing's most successful jockey.
CV TONY McCOY
Who is he:Tony McCoy, jump racing's winning-most jockey
Why is he in news: He is just two wins short of breaking through the 3,000-winner barrier over jumps
Most likely to say: 'I really, really want to win the next race'
Least likely to say: 'I don't fancy going to the races today'
Most appealing characteristic: His fanatical desire to win
Most unappealing characteristic: His fanatical desire to win
