“We all want it to be a fairytale and they don’t happen often,” Jonjo O’Neill says as the last days of AP McCoy’s racing career hurtle towards the end with the hope he might win the Grand National on Saturday and bow out of an unforgiving sport amid bliss and euphoria. McCoy has promised to retire immediately if he and Shutthefrontdoor, trained by O’Neill, triumph in the famous old race.
“It would be brilliant for everyone in racing,” O’Neill says as he sets aside the ambitions of his rivals and, instead, relishes the prospect of joy for McCoy and happiness for almost everyone who has marvelled at the jockey’s amazing desire and longevity. McCoy has been jump racing’s champion jockey for 20 successive years – the last 11 of which have been won mostly on horses owned by JP McManus and trained by O’Neill.
The genial O’Neill, a former champion jockey himself, has survived cancer and, turning 63 next week, he has lived too long to cling to romantic yearnings. His optimism is rooted in tangible hope. “It would almost be too good to be true. But I am hopeful for AP because he’s on a good horse who is a decent jumper and in form. I couldn’t be happier. His weight is right, his bloods are right, everything is right. We’ve just got keep him like that. That’s the hard bit.”
O’Neill laughs dryly. He and McCoy have lost more than 60 Nationals between them to set against their lone victory, when the trainer and jockey combined with McManus, whose horse Don’t Push It won the race in 2010. Listening to O’Neill at his sumptuous yard, Jackdaws Castle in Gloucestershire, it sounds as if he has even more belief in Shutthefrontdoor.
“I do, actually. Don’t Push It was a nutcase. This fella is more placid. You could put a child on him. He’s an ideal horse. Don’t Push It was in good form but this fella is blooming. He’s opening up at the right time. It’s very exciting and it’s not bullshit. It’s facts. He’s really well and we have a lot of confidence. Of course he could fall at the first …”
McCoy will definitely retire at the end of the month but interest in the National has deepened ever since he confirmed a glorious victory at Aintree on Shutthefrontdoor would mark his last race. It seems in keeping with the battered vagaries of jump racing, where terrible falls and operations litter every jockey’s career, that O’Neill should follow his breathless anticipation by expressing uncertainty when considering McCoy’s future.
He has suffered excruciating pain after bone-breaking falls, and withstood starvation and exhaustion in a career defined by sacrifice, but McCoy is addicted to racing winners. I ask O’Neill a simple question which he repeats out loud as if to measure the gravity of its meaning: “Will he be OK?” he echoes of McCoy. “That’s a very hard question to answer. Well, yes, if everything goes OK …”
O’Neill pauses, scrunching up his cheerful face as he considers the loss McCoy will soon confront. “It’s like dropping off the end of a cliff. What is he going to do? How will he replace the intensity? When I gave up as a jockey [in 1986] I didn’t know that my tiredness was due to cancer. I was already training point-to-pointers – it was Mickey Mouse stuff but it was something. He’s just going to go woommmfff [O’Neill mimics stepping off a cliff]. How do you handle that? How do you get used to that?”
All his giddy expectations for the National have been replaced by more complex concern for a man whose drive to ride horses beats so fiercely inside him. “I don’t know what he’ll do,” O’Neill eventually says. “I imagine it will be something with JP [McManus]. I’m sure JP will ask his advice on horses and he’ll come ride out occasionally. But, when you’re not doing it for real, it’s hard. I don’t know how it will work out … it’s going to be interesting.”
Does he harbour fears for McCoy, who admits to being consumed by racing? “No,” O’Neill says firmly, “he will end up doing something. Everyone will want him and he will have a choice of work but he won’t have that buzz of being a jockey. He’s too obsessive … he wants to get things done. He won’t be on to his agent, Dave Roberts, to plan his rides for the week. It leaves a big fucking hole in your life.”
O’Neill shrugs when asked if he and McCoy talk about the future. “Not really. I ask him, ‘What are you going to do?’ and he says, ‘I haven’t a fucking clue.’ He’s saying that less now so I think he’s got something with JP and maybe Channel 4. I’m not sure he’ll be happy being a pundit but he’s lucky. He’s got Chanelle [McCoy’s wife] and she’s a very sound girl.”
Racing will not be the same without McCoy to call on as stable jockey for McManus, whose horses dominate O’Neill’s yard. “It’s sad in one way and very exciting in another,” O’Neill says. ‘You wonder who is the new Synchronised [the 2012 Gold Cup-winning horse which McCoy rode and O’Neill trained before it died a month later at the National] or the new Shutthefrontdoor. I get a kick out of new horses coming along. You think this fella could be great – he probably turns out to be useless but it keeps you going. That gives me my buzz.
“I don’t know where AP will get his buzz. He says he won’t be a trainer. And he definitely won’t be a jumps trainer. There’s too much hassle with the jumps, too many injuries. It’s too slow for McCoy. He’d be better on the Flat with the two-year-olds.”
O’Neill’s admiration for McCoy is unstinting. He recalls some of his great rides – whether it was the incredible victory at Cheltenham on Wichita Lineman in 2009 or the lesser-known front-running romp on Eastlake at Ascot in 2012 when McCoy ignored O’Neill’s instructions and took the lead early in the race. “It happens,” O’Neill says, grinning. “You say this fella is a monkey so don’t get him to the front too soon. AP does it from instinct … even if I might be yelling in the stands. But his win on Wichita Lineman was fantastic. That was magic. The horse was an OK jumper – nothing more. AP’s willpower got him home. He told the horse: ‘We will win because we want to win.’ The horse was willing to win but AP did it.’”
McCoy’s willpower when riding through pain is another defining attribute but this season not even the legendary ironman could overcome falls at Worcester and then Wetherby. “It was bad,” O’Neill says. “When AP couldn’t ride or walk you knew he was dying. The ribs, the collarbone, the shoulder were all fucked. I kept saying: ‘For fuck’s sake take a week off and it’ll heal. It just needs some time.’ But he was going for 300 winners and you couldn’t tell him anything. It was in his head … 300, 300, 300. You couldn’t blame him.’
Did O’Neill believe 300 winners was feasible for the 40-year-old? “Oh yeah,” he exclaims, remembering that McCoy racked up as his 150th winner in mid-October. “It was on the cards. But the injuries did for him.”
O’Neill had no idea, then, that McCoy was in the midst of his last season. “He was as hungry as ever but after the injury break he gave up the ghost of 300 [McCoy is on 228 winners]. He still wanted to be champion jockey – even though he was 70 ahead. Most fellas would be delighted to have that many winners in a season rather than being ahead by that much.
“Chanelle mentioned his retirement to me first. She said: ‘This could be his last season.’ I said: ‘Don’t be bloody soft. He’s riding better than ever. Why would he retire?’ But that was me talking selfishly. He’s married, he’s got two kids and the falls are bad … Jesus, you don’t get up so easy anymore. You’re getting older. It doesn’t matter who you are.”
O’Neill’s end as a jockey was different, just a month after he had won the Gold Cup on Dawn Run. ‘My last race was at Ayr at the Scottish Champion Hurdle in 1986,” he remembers. “I fell off backwards. It was a strange fall and I was cold and sweaty and feverish and shook up.”
Cancer was diagnosed a few days later but O’Neill, against the odds, survived. His wit remains intact. He compares his own life as a champion jockey to McCoy who is cushioned by the help of a driver and an agent. “He’s had it easy!” O’Neill chortles. “In my day you’d be driving yourself, from Sandown to Ayr, booking your own rides. You had no agent. I loved it though. It was brilliant. I was one of the first to get a mobile phone and it was like a bloody suitcase. You’d stop in the fucking lay-by because the signal wouldn’t work.
“The medical care wasn’t up to much which was a good job because I wouldn’t have been riding much. You would be given a red entry and you’d be trying to trace over it in blue. I was crackers. It was a great game even though it was barbaric stuff. Concrete posts on the fences! We didn’t even think about it because health and safety didn’t exist.”
O’Neill suffered even worse injuries than McCoy. His leg was broken so badly, twice, that it looked certain to be amputated by a surgeon in Basel. “I had to sign the consent form before the operation. I would’ve been glad to get rid of it because of the pain. You’re suffering and suffering. But, somehow, they saved it. They must have been brilliant because it was very bad. I’ve since had a new knee [replacement] and it’s fine now. I could ride again.”
He chortles, for O’Neill is now more used to the bruising battles of trying to become a champion trainer. Earlier this season that ambition looked briefly possible. “We started well. We had a good summer and the horses were in great form. AP was riding out of his skin but December was a disaster. No winners. January wasn’t much better. We just couldn’t put our finger on it. They looked OK, they were working grand but they couldn’t finish a bloody race. All of them. It was weird. It went on for two months.
“We spent a lot of money on vets and a fella rang me and said when the snowdrops and the daffies start popping though it will be all right. That’s what happened. It’s nature isn’t it? But it was a fucking long wait for them to pop up!”
Fairytales are less natural in jump racing but O’Neill sounds sanguine when asked who will be the calmest out of the Irish trio of McCoy, McManus and himself on Saturday? “It won’t bother me,” he claims. “As long as AP and his fella get home safe and sound I’ll be happy.”
O’Neill pauses before he succumbs to a racing fantasy. “But listen, if we win it will be fantastic. It will be a lifetime achievement for McCoy. I’d love it …we’d all love it.”
