The numbers and anecdotes that will boggle your mind will arrive in due course but first Sir Anthony McCoy wants to explain his apprehension.
A landmark birthday is approaching – he’ll be 50 next Saturday – and saying the number out loud leads to a grimace. In his head, he feels no different to the young man from Moneyglass in County Antrim who arrived on these shores aged 20 in August 1994, driving ‘my little Peugeot 205’ into Toby Balding’s yard burning with dreams and desire.
McCoy could control almost everything in his life, from championship races to the kind of pain that would make most of us faint, but not the ageing process. Nor will he be able to shape events at the Tottenham Stadium this afternoon, something that will leave this Arsenal devotee tormented.
‘Sitting on a horse at Cheltenham? No problem,’ McCoy begins. ‘Sitting watching a match?’
He doesn’t need to finish the sentence, the raised eyebrows and wry smile says enough.
AP McCoy will turn 50 next Saturday and admitted he was ‘disappointed’ by his age
McCoy spoke exclusively to Mail Sport’s Dominic King ahead of his 50th birthday
One of the greatest jockeys in history, McCoy won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2012 (above)
‘One of my proudest possessions is a signed shirt from The Invincibles squad that Ray Parlour got me for my 30th birthday,’ he continues. ‘It says “McCoy 30” and I’ve got it up in my games room, next to a signed shirt Steve McManaman gave to me after Real Madrid won the Champions League.
‘Now I’m going to be 50… Jeez, that’s disappointing. But then again, I look at my dear friend Pat Smullen, who died at 43. Maybe getting to 50 really is a privilege. Time plays tricks on you, doesn’t it? 20 years seems like five minutes ago.’
And it feels like only yesterday the greatest of all time – who rode a scarcely believable 4358 winners during an unbroken two decade reign as Champion Jump Jockey – took his final ride at Sandown but here we are, nine years on. Retirement put a hole in his life that remains.
‘If you are lucky enough to ever have performed on a big stage, nothing can replace it,’ he says.
‘Any sportsman will tell you that. The top ones, Tiger Woods and others, genuinely believe people go to see them. It’s the greatest privilege of all time. You are out there and you know: “this is the dream”.’
This is a fitting way to take us into the next story.
‘I’ve never told anyone this,’ McCoy begins. ‘This is really eerie. I went to a fortune teller, one night after Wexford races in 1991. I’d never been to a fortune teller in my life. I went there with a lad called Connor Everard, we worked together as apprentices at Jim Bolger’s.
‘I go into the caravan, this gypsy didn’t have a clue who I was or have any idea what I did. She says to me: “I see horses and big events, you’re going to be involved in them. It might take time but there is a jockey called Lester Piggott. You are going to be like him.” I swear on my life.
Two years earlier, McCoy triumphed in the Grand National riding Don’t Push It
The Northern Irishman was a Champion Jockey a record 20 consecutive times in his career
Following his retirement, McCoy transitioned from the paddock to the TV as an analyst for ITV
McCoy is a regular figure on ITV’s coverage at Cheltenham and the Grand National
‘I remember coming out and Conor asking me: “what did she say?” I said: “Oh, something about horses.” Listen – I’m not for one minute saying I’m like Lester Piggott. I had three-and-a-half years in Jim’s after that and rode nine winners. But that’s the truth.’
Talk about seeing into the future. McCoy’s career, though, owed nothing to fortune and even in this limited window, you begin to understand how his mind works and his forensic obsession to detail. Starting in 1996, he wrote reports – which he still has in his loft at home – on every horse he rode.
He constantly goes into the calendar on his phone and scrolls through the Racing Post app to ensure dates and information he provides are correct, such as the events of February 21, 2003 at Kempton Park when McCoy graphically explains the lengths he would go to for success.
‘I’d fallen off a horse called Neutron in the first race,’ he says. ‘I remember hitting the ground and thinking: “Oh my ****ing God! That is sore.” I looked over and the racecourse doctor was by the hurdle. “Are you ok?” he asked. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” I said. I wasn’t.
‘I knew my collarbone was gone. But I thought I had three or four certainties to come and I couldn’t let anyone else ride them, so I took some painkillers. The first one got beat but the next three won. People think I’m a nut job when I talk like this but it’s the truth.’
For the record, he broke his middle and lower vertebrae; both shoulder blades and collarbones; ribs, an ankle, cheekbones, his wrist, ankle, fingers, nose and leg plus a dislocated thumb and chipped teeth. He lifts up his sleeve to show to show a scar that runs from his wrist to his elbow.
‘I broke my arm at Worcester in June 2003,’ he goes on. ‘I got compartment syndrome, Tiger Woods had it after his car crash. It’s an increase of pressure inside a muscle, which restricts blood flow. I cut my cast off during the night because my arm was bursting through it. I was eating painkillers, sweat poured off me.
‘I broke it on the Wednesday, come Friday morning I rang my doctor at 8am. He told me: “get to A and E straight away”. I had four or five anaesthetics in eight days, so they could flush everything out of me. They told me if I had left it, I was looking at an amputation.
‘I started wondering: what could I have done different? Was I reacting too slowly? I’d got friendly with Ray Parlour and he told me to come in to see Arsenal’s fitness coach Tony Colbert. He was unbelievable. Arsene Wenger had changed everyone’s attitudes to fitness and lifestyle.
Over the course of his career, McCoy broke his middle and lower vertebrae; both shoulder blades and collarbones; ribs, an ankle, cheekbones, his wrist, ankle, fingers
‘So I used to see Tony three times a week while I was getting back fit. I started eating much different then, salads that kind of thing. I saw a different side to sport being in there, at London Colney. I love sport, I love talented sportsmen. They’re different. Their mind-set is different.
‘I watched Richard Dunwoody like a stalker. There were talented jockeys but he was something different: nuts, in the best possible way. No weakness. Ryan Moore is like him, emotionless. The best ones all have a switch: Tiger Woods, Diego Maradona, Mike Tyson, Novak Djokovic.’
But so did he and sometimes it doesn’t get appreciated just how dominant he was. Woods spent 281 consecutive weeks as World Number One and 683 in total; Djokovic has been Number One in his field for 422 weeks. McCoy led his field from 1995 to 2015, the champion for 1040 weeks.
It is easy to argue his claims for being Britain’s great sportsman.
‘I was at Ayr last Saturday,’ says McCoy, who dotes on his children Eve and Archie. ‘A woman came up to me: “what type of mood are you in?” she asked. I was like: “Huh?” I’m not as bad as people think, you know! There is a perception that people have that I am miserable all the time. I was never miserable! Do you know what I was? So insecure.
‘Every time I went to bed, I thought to myself: “this is never going to happen again.” When I was on a horse, I thought everything was easy. Any horse in the land, as long as I had a chance of winning, I didn’t care. But for the first 10-12 years of being Champion Jockey, I was so insecure.
‘I rode five winners at Ascot, on the Saturday before Christmas in 2001. Westender was the only one that got beaten. I walked out that night thinking: “Jeez, wasn’t that great?” Five winners from six races. By the time I got home, I was thinking: “I could have ridden every winner there today.”
McCoy said he’d known for almost five years that he would retire from racing
He eventually called time on an extraordinary career and raced for the last time on April 25, 2015 at Sandown Park
‘That then became: “What happens if I never ride five winners again?” The enjoyment had completely gone and I’d convinced myself what I’d done was a load of s***. It was actually a disappointment because I’d lost on a favourite. And that misery was what made me keep going.’
It drove him on, remorselessly, enabling him to become the big race king, with the 2010 Grand National on Don’t Push It and the 2012 Cheltenham Gold Cup on Synchronised, both in the green-and-gold colours of JP McManus, his particular favourites.
He had incredible strength but was also able to get into a horse’s mind, coaxing and cajoling effort without them even knowing. One flat jockey told this correspondent last summer that if McCoy was riding now, he’d still be champion. That observation is put to him. He pauses before he replies.
‘I think I would, yeah,’ McCoy offers. He is serious.
Really?
‘I think I could do it next year if I wasn’t 50 next week,’ he explains. ‘Jesus, it’s a terrible, arrogant thing to say, isn’t it? But I do actually believe it.’
Why?
‘I just think I could get myself in the zone and get fit again,’ he explains. ‘But talking the talk is all well and good, isn’t it? I’d have to walk the walk. I’d never have said that in the past. I used to hold the trophy up at Sandown and I’d go to bed that Saturday night and I’d hate the world.
‘I’d think: “you may as well put that trophy in the bin. Everyone will be Champion Jockey when they wake up in the morning.” Maybe I got too brainwashed looking at Dunwoody or Tiger Woods, people who didn’t care what the outside world thought. They get so wrapped up in themselves.
‘But retirement was always coming. I knew for five years I was retiring. I see with the life-changing injuries Graham Lee has suffered how lucky I was to walk away in one piece. I often think how did I get away with that?’
A devoted Arsenal fan, McCoy grew up idolising Gunners legend Liam Brady
And the racing legend has been impressed by Declan Rice in his first season at the Emirates
Mention of Lee, another dear friend who was paralysed following a fall at Newcastle last November, leads him to quietly reflect and he returns to where we started, talking about the privilege of life and the blessings that have come his way. One more on Sunday, though, would be welcome.
‘I’ve heard (Martin) Odegaard compared to (Dennis) Bergkamp,’ says McCoy, who grew up idolising Liam Brady. ‘He’s got a way to go but he’s a footballer. And Declan Rice – he’s the cheapest player that’s ever been bought. He looks like a proper person. He’s got a good mind-set and I like that.
‘Three points would be pretty cool today but, whatever happens, they are never going to beat The Invincibles.’
Invincible and unbeatable: words, fittingly, that describe Sir Anthony McCoy at 50.
