The real McCoy | 30 April 2015

At Sandown Park last Saturday an era ended. Twenty thousand of us turned up to cheer on Tony McCoy as he took his last two mounts and collected his 20th trophy as champion jumps rider. We cheered, we clapped, we decided there was nothing to be ashamed of about a certain moistness of eye, noting that even the ultimate iron man himself wept a tear or two as he rode back on the third-placed Box Office.

Over the past 20 years, the riding of racehorses has become ever more professional, but not once during that period has anybody else been champion jockey over jumps. For once the old cliché works: we will never see his like again.

Just look at the statistics: AP rode in 17,630 races and won 4,357 of them, an extraordinary strike rate of 24 per cent. Two great champions before him, Peter Scudamore and Richard Dunwoody, rode 1,678 and 1,699 respectively. Only last year he reached the quickest century of winners ever, by 21 August. Inevitably, he holds the record for the most jumps winners ridden in a season at 289: he had hoped to bow out with 300 this year, but lost that chance when injury sidelined him for several weeks.

Nowhere in the sport, however, will you find resentment or jealousy at AP’s achievements: there is only wonder at his application and will to win on stages big and small. A non-drinker and nowadays the proud father of Eve and Archie who, along with wife Chanelle, have tempered his obsessiveness he is a model sportsman: modest, professional and just plain likeable. Typically, AP’s first week of retirement will include visits in Ireland to two badly injured jockeys, cousins Robbie and JT McNamara.