REAL McCOY AT 50
As he reaches a landmark birthday, racing legend on how a fortune teller predicted he’d be the Lester Piggott of jump racing, winning with a broken collarbone and being driven on by insecurity
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&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.
‘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.’
Sometimes it doesn’t get appreciated just how dominant McCoy was. Woods spent 281 consecutive weeks as World No 1 and 683 in total; Djokovic has been No 1 in his field for 422 weeks. McCoy led his field from 1995 to 2015, the champion for 1,040 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.
‘The enjoyment had completely gone and I’d convinced myself what I’d done was a load of s***. 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 greenand-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.
‘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.’
‘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?’
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 today, 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. ‘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.