McCoy’s still the best so why is he riding into the sunset?
Wenger’s appeal to stop fan backlash
Sunday, april 26. That is when it becomes real. The second act of Tony McCoy’s life. Tomorrow he will dismount from the bay gelding Box Office after the 5.30pm at Sandown Park — the Bet365 Handicap Hurdle — and it will begin.
Perhaps it will not quite sink in, at first, amid the cheers and roars, the hoopla and a presentation from Ian Wright, an arsenal hero, as befits McCoy’s club allegiance.
yet the following morning, when McCoy awakes an ex-jockey, he will understand there are no more competitive rides, no more races, no more Cheltenhams or aintrees or even modest little handicap hurdles to separate him from the field. Just entries in record books and the fact he will never have to put his hand in his pocket at any racetrack in Britain or Ireland to remind him of what was.
To date, McCoy has 4,357 winning memories. Eddie arcaro had 4,779, including five Kentucky derbys. He was known as The Master in american racing, comparable in his field to baseball legend Joe diMaggio and golf’s Jack nicklaus.
‘I liked being a celebrity, if I’m being honest,’ said arcaro. ‘When a jockey retires he becomes just another little man.’ arcaro was retired 36 years before succumbing to liver cancer in 1997.
It cannot be said that McCoy has courted celebrity, or that he will ever be regarded as a little man by racegoers, yet as he scurries to his new life, minus its thrills, spills and the snap of broken bones, one cannot help but ask: why?
To be a jockey is to live a life of denial, early nights, early mornings, restraint at the dinner table, water at the bar, long, hot baths to sweat out the weight that, in McCoy’s case, lowered his sperm count.
His children were born through IVF treatment. yet not one of McCoy’s thoughts on retiring has centred greatly on the inconveniences or even the pain of injury.
He doesn’t now talk excitedly of lavish lunches or late nights, of never having to look at a fractured vertebrae via x-ray; there is no hint of the social whirl experienced by Sir alex Ferguson on stepping down at Manchester united.
McCoy will host a party at home on Sunday for family, friends and his closest racing colleagues, and the next day travel to the Punchestown festival with JP McManus, as a spectator.
The rest of his retirement talk amounts to wishful thinking. McCoy simply reiterates he would still like to be riding. If he could ride in disguise for another three years he would do just that.
and why would he need a mask? That is the puzzle of McCoy’s decision: the fear that appears to be at the heart of it.
He is genuinely, unfathomably, unnerved by the thought of staying too long, of not going out a winner. True, Brian Clough was relegated in his final season at nottingham Forest, Sugar Ray Leonard’s last comeback of four ended in an early stoppage, Paul Gascoigne travelled to pitifully obscure outposts trying to cling on to what remained of his professional career.
yet, another year of McCoy? another year of the man who leads the Jump Jockeys Championship by an insurmountable margin?
Random misfortune aside, we know full well what would happen if he stayed on another year. He would be champion jockey a 21st time.
To put this view into perspective, the gap between McCoy and Tom Scudamore, who is in second place in the jockey’s table, is 82 wins, while the gap between Scudamore and third- placed Richard Johnson is two. Between Johnson and Sam Twiston-davies it is four, between Twiston-davies and Brian Hughes, 37.
There is no margin anywhere comparable to the distance between McCoy and the rest. There is no-one on his shoulder, no-one breathing down his neck, no- one gaining on him up the hill.
What worries him — that people may think he is not the rider of old — is several years away, at least.
Hence his fantasy of racing in disguise, without the burden of history. ‘I’d ride forever if I could,’ he explained. Ferguson got out of Manchester united at the right time. He could not have foreseen the calamitous fall of david Moyes’ first season, but he must have had an inkling that his team might find it hard to retain their title.
a businessman, too, Ferguson would have known the commercial cache in leaving a winner — the opportunities in the world of publishing, or at Harvard and beyond.
HERE was his chance — and who knows when the conditions would be right again? a man of many interests, and past retirement age, he stood down and prepared to enjoy life. It was absolutely the right thing to do.
yet McCoy’s farewell is almost troubling.
‘When he retired, they should have shot him,’ said Jack Charlton of his brother, Bobby. ‘I’ve never seen anybody so unhappy.’
Sir Bobby has, thankfully, since made the second life all great sportsmen crave, as an ambassador for Manchester united and the Football association, and a voice of reason within the boardroom at Old Trafford.
McCoy, almost certainly, will find a berth in racing where his expertise will be valued, no doubt with JP McManus.
yet it still won’t be Fakenham on a wet Thursday — it won’t be the Weatherbys novice Hurdle at Towcester, in which McCoy piloted his 4,000th winner, Mountain Tunes.
For an athlete at the top as McCoy has been for so long, nothing can quite compare to the thrill of competition. For McCoy, any competition. The sheer number of times he took a race on sets him apart.
In 2001-02, he rode over 1,000 times in Britain alone and since Richard dunwoody claimed 160 winners to be crowned champion jump jockey in 1994-95, McCoy has surpassed that total in each of his 20 seasons.
There will never be another like him — a fact he wanted to make sure of before retiring. It was important he would go to his grave unmatched.
yet it is that determination, the desire for the victory no matter how small, that cannot be replicated in retirement.
Gary neville is very serious about his media work and won a broadcast award given by the Royal Television Society in March. His bosses at Sky wanted him to make a fuss about it. He refused. He wouldn’t even recognise the news on his Twitter page.
It was clear he didn’t feel this achievement compared to those in his playing career. Then last week, when Salford City — the club he owns along with other members of the Class of 92 — won northern Premier League division One north, neville was all over it.
Whatever McCoy’s place in the world from here, it cannot compare to the thrill of the chase. That is why punters loved him, why his farewell at Sandown has long been a sell-out.
This is a jockey who — on at least two occasions — rode winners that had drifted to 999-1 on Betfair at the midway stage.
He was unseated by Family Business at Southwell in 2002 but kept watching the race and, on seeing the other four competitors
variously fall or retire, remounted and won. Two years later, on the aptly named Mini Sensation at Exeter, he almost lost touch with the field with a circuit to go, before hitting the front 50 yards out. Mini Sensation had recorded eight straight losses going into that race.
McCoy’s wife, Chanelle, will be pleased her husband no longer risks adding to a roll call of injuries that make the longevity of his time at the top all the more remarkable — and McCoy’s father says he no longer enjoys watching him race. Maybe, deep down, even McCoy himself wondered how long he could continue to dodge the big one — the fall that might challenge his champion status.
‘One minute you’re a world-class athlete, walking down the road, holding your head up, feeling bullet- proof,’ said Billy Schwer, former IBO light- welterweight champion, now retired.
‘You’re Billy the Boxer. Then, in an instant, just Billy.’
McCoy has been trying to prepare himself for that moment all week. He turned down rides at Perth to give him the feel of spare time before sundown at Sandown.
He is not looking forward to the weekend after, when he feels it will truly hit home. ‘ A lot of people wanted me to go to Perth,’ said McCoy. ‘But if I went to Perth I could think “why not do one more week at Punchestown?”
‘A lot of days I wish I wasn’t doing it, that I hadn’t said it. But I’m not changing my mind. I’m too stubborn for that.’
He leaves having transformed his sport, having helped create four- day festivals that capture the imagination like at no time in history.
He leaves having dominated for 20 years — a feat unparalleled, setting records that will not be so much as glimpsed at a distance, let alone challenged in his lifetime. And he leaves sounding every bit as certain as Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre did in 2008, bringing the curtain down on a career of similar achievement.
‘ I’ve given everything I can possibly give to this organisation,’ said Favre. ‘I don’t think I have anything left to give. It’s over. As hard as it is for me to say, it’s over.
‘I will wonder if I made the wrong decision. I’m sure on Sundays I will say I could be doing that or I should be doing that.
‘But all good things must come to an end.’
The world agreed, and wished him well. The next year, he was back.
ARSENE WENGER wants Cesc Fabregas to be shown the ‘respect he deserves’ when he returns to the emirates stadium in the blue of Chelsea on sunday. The problem with that is a decent chunk of Arsenal’s supporters feel he doesn’t deserve much.
That became obvious yesterday, when one prominent fan called for the removal of a Fabregas banner from the Ken Friar Bridge.
extreme, perhaps, but this is an emotive issue which continues to bubble away at the club where Fabregas built his career, not least because the circumstances behind his summer move from Barcelona to Chelsea are still as clear as mud.
Any clarity, it seems, will have to wait. Wenger was at his cryptic best yesterday when asked if it was his call to not take up an option he had to re- sign the player, saying: ‘We will have to discuss that one day. With all the terms.’
When pressed on whether it was his decision, he added: ‘It’s not as clean as that. I cannot speak to you about that now because that will not help us to win on sunday.’
At that point it was suggested to Wenger that Fabregas chose not to come back and Wenger said: ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’
The Frenchman has previously claimed that by the time he knew Fabregas (right) was available, a deal with Chelsea was virtually concluded — comments which jarred a little with the spaniard’s statement last summer that Arsenal ‘decided not to take’ their option.
Whatever, it would be ambitious for Fabregas to expect an overwhelmingly positive reception on sunday. Certainly, there was already a degree of disappointment within the club about how their relationship with the player ended when he left in 2011.
But Wenger said yesterday: ‘I want every player to be respected, and Cesc Fabregas when he comes to the emirates on sunday, (I want him) to be respected like he deserves.’
Wenger added: ‘The regret I have is that he wanted to leave here. This club and myself had a very positive influence on Cesc’s life, so I would be a bit uncomfortable to have to justify today why he is not here.’ When he returns, it will be as a key part of the champions- elect and
under a manager in Jose Mourinho who has won seven and drawn five of his 12 meetings with Wenger.
That clash, in itself, is a fascinating sub-plot to this fixture between the top and second-placed teams in the Barclays Premier League.
Playing down his poor record against Mourinho, Wenger said: ‘We have not always lost, first of all, in 12 attempts.
‘We have come close to beating them and they’ve always had very strong teams. Having said all of that, the result on sunday will be just down to the performance on the day. It’s not a confrontation (with Mourinho), it’s a confrontation of two teams. I’m not a great believer in history. I just think football is down to the fact the perform- ance on the day will decidecide the game and the result.’
With seven straight league wins, Arsenal approach the fixture at speed, but Wenger accepts it is unlikely Chelsea will lose a 10-point advantage on the run-in.
He said: ‘We dropped points at the start of the season but since January we have been top of the (form) table. We want to continue to win and strengthen our position in second place because that’s far from being done. Now what we can do is get closer to them and we have that opportunity. It still means even if we beat them, mathematically they are still in a very strong position. But you never know.’