HOLLIE PUTS LEW IN A SPOTY BOTHER
McCoy tips Doyle to match him and pip Hamilton to BBC gong
SIR AP McCOY is backing Hollie Doyle’s bid to follow in his footsteps and land the BBC Sports Personality Of The Year award tomorrow night.
McCoy was responsible for racing’s first – and, so far, only – SPOTY victory when lifting the iconic turret-lens camera trophy in December 2010, eight months after ending his long wait for Grand National triumph aboard Don’t Push It.
And the 20- time champion National Hunt jockey, who has ridden more winners over jumps than anyone else, saluted Doyle’s feat in making the shortlist for the coveted prize.
Modest Doyle, the jockey sensation of 2020 who is up against Lewis Hamilton , Ronnie O’Sullivan, Tyson Fury, Jordan Henderson and Stuart Broad, dismissed her nomination as “crazy”.
But McCoy said: “She should be very proud of herself.
“She’s ridden more winners than any woman has ever before and you can talk about her having a realistic chance of being champion jockey.
“It won’t be easy, but she’s very, very good. She has done remarkably well. In terms of Sports Personality, she should just enjoy the moment.”
Victory would put the seal on an incredible year for Herefordshireborn Doyle, whose parents Mark and Caroline rode as jockeys.
In June, she realised a childhood dream when riding Scarlet Dragon to lift the Duke Of Edinburgh Stakes for a landmark first success at Royal Ascot.
Selected highlights of her 2020 showreel include a personal best of 148 winners, a five-timer – at odds of 899-1 – at Windsor in August, and a first Group 1 success aboard Glen Shiel on Ascot’s QIPCO Champions Day card in October, on which Doyle and partner Tom Marquand captured four of the six races.
A triumph for Doyle would also land a “spectacular” gamble that has seen her SPOTY odds tumble to 9-4.
Hamilton has been hot favourite to repeat his win of 2014 since clinching a seventh F1 World Drivers’ Championship last month.
Doyle was a 100-1 outsider when betting on SPOTY 2020 began in the summer, and could still be backed at 33-1 on Wednesday morning.
But, reporting a constant flow of support for the jockey, Paddy Power’s Paul Binfield said: “It’s not so long since a Sports Personality Of The Year win for Hollie Doyle seemed a pipe dream – but now it’s very much a reality. As her stock has risen, her odds have fallen. It has been a spectacular gamble.”