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SCOTTISH CUP SEMIS AND SCOTTISH NATIONAL
TONY McCOY has broken virtually every bone in his body. Middle and lower vertebrae, both shoulder blades, both collarbones, ribs, ankle, cheekbones, wrist, ankle, dislocated thumb, broken teeth, umpteen broken fingers – and nose. He would go entire days surviving on just a couple of Jelly Babies and cups of sugary tea to stay at the weight necessary to ride the very best horses. McCoy’s commitment to the game brought him 20 successive championship titles and an incredible 3458 winners, plus nine on the flat. It also ended up with him honoured. Not that he likes to be called Sir Anthony –“Tony’s just fine.” McCoy is the greatest jumps jockey racing has ever had and he will remain the greatest there has been over time, no matter how long horses turn out and jump obstacles. So when the time came for it to end two years ago, resting healing bones and eating banquets away from racing would have seemed the logical thing for anyone to do after over two decades of sacrifice. He has gained two stones in weight simply by eating like a normal person. He has more time for his cherished family. Instead of ploughing along a motorway to the races, he was jumping up and down on a trampoline with threeyear-old son Archie when taking Record Sport’s call. But McCoy giving it all up completely? He just can’t. Racing won’t let him go and most importantly, he won’t let it go.
He handles a TV microphone at the races now as opposed to half-ton equine athletes and works for his old boss JP McManus studying and plotting plans, heading around the country to ride the horses in training of a morning.
McCoy was obsessed then and he’s obsessed now. He said: “I like racing too much. I’ve always been into it since childhood and just because I couldn’t stay being a jockey, it didn’t mean walking away.
“I would not know what to do with myself if I wasn’t involved with or watching racing.
“I’m keeping busy, mind you. I always wondered what I’d do when I retired and there were reasons why I thought I wouldn’t train.
“I was engrossed and dedicated to the sport for 20-odd years and if I was going to train, I was going to have to give up my entire life again and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that again so soon.
“I loved my riding career but I made sacrifices and I didn’t get to do other things. I’m happy now, maybe in a year or two’s time I’ll look again.
“Training? Aidan O’Brien is five years older than me. How can I ever beat him! I’m enjoying my life and the TV work just now but it’s not as easy as you might think.
“You do Celtic v Rangers for TV on Sunday. The game is 45 minutes each half but you’ll do 10 minutes before, five at half-time and then 10 afterwards.
“Go to Newmarket and do a six-furlong race. It takes about 90 seconds and then you have 28 and a half minutes trying to make interesting conversation.
“You are explaining how a horse gets to A to B in any race. You are filling time but I enjoy it. It’s important for racing that ITV goes well and it is doing so.” Just as racing is in Scotland these days with record crowds week on week. More than 17,000 will pack sold-out Ayr for today’s Grand National, the showpiece of the country’s biggest race day.
The event is special to McCoy. For all his catalogue of triumphs, just one of those came in Scotland’s jumping flagship.
McCoy drove Belmont King to success for his one-and-only triumph in the event in 1997 – and he revealed it was a chance success.
He said: “I have lots of memories of the Scottish Grand National.
“The Cheltenham April meeting was always on and we’d drive up Thursday night to Ayr. It could be five of us bundled in a car and up the road but it was great.
“Ayr was such a fair track and the Scottish Grand National really is the country’s biggest racing day. It’s obvious Belmont King would be my fondest memory of the Scottish.
“A lot of people might not remember Belmont King was due to run in the Grand National at Aintree the week before but it was the year of the bomb scare.
“The horse got really upset at the races and trainer Paul Nicholls decided to take him home.
“When the race was re-run on the Monday, Paul wasn’t sure about going back with him, so opted to keep him for Ayr the following week.
“That Aintree National was the only one I missed because I had concussion and I also wasn’t meant to ride Belmont King.
“I had joined Martin Pipe where six months earlier I’d been riding for Paul. We kinda fell out. I remember reading we were never going to be a partnership again, yet six months down the line I’d nothing to ride in the race and I ended up riding him.
“The Scottish was my first and I didn’t win another National until Butler’s Cabin won the Irish in 2007. Then I won the Welsh and Midlands with Synchronised.
“Paul kindly let me ride him and, if he hadn’t, I’d never have won it.”
● Tony McCoy spoke as an ambassador for William Hill.