This year’s Cheltenham Festival has unfolded in front of a half-finished grandstand that will raise the capacity at the home of jumps racing to nearly 70,000 when it is completed next year. The meeting is a bridge between one era and the next as the Festival’s popularity continues to grow, and its Gold Cup will be a race that straddles the ages too. The new Cheltenham, and the modern business that jumping has become, is represented by runners from the three-figure strings of Paul Nicholls, Willie Mullins and Nicky Henderson. Arrayed against them are several old‑fashioned steeplechasers from smaller stables, reminders of a different time in the sport when 40 horses were more than enough to win the trainers’ title. And above all, there is Tony McCoy, the most successful jump jockey the sport has seen, who will ride the 12-1 chance Carlingford Lough in his last Gold Cup.
When Cheltenham moves on next year, it will do so without him. The racing will look the same but a sport that depends on uncertainty like no other will have lost one of its few fixed points. McCoy has been National Hunt’s champion jockey for nearly two decades, an extraordinary record when every ride could be the one that breaks an arm or a leg, or worse. His landmark achievements have been front page news, he was the Sports Personality of the Year after winning the Grand National, and he is – and will remain, even in retirement – the only jump jockey that the average British citizen might recognise or name.
When McCoy started out 20 years ago on the path that would take him beyond 4,000 winners, well over a thousand more than any other jump jockey in history, the Festival attracted about 150,000 spectators over three days. Now, it is approaching a quarter of a million over four, and McCoy has not merely ridden the wave. It is one that he helped to create. He is not the most successful rider at the Festival. Ruby Walsh holds that record and will continue to extend away once McCoy is watching from the sidelines. But it has been the scene of some of his most memorable rides, from his first Gold Cup victory on Mr Mulligan in 1997, in only his second season as a senior jockey, to the success in the same race aboard Synchronised in 2012 which summed up everything that the fans had come to know and cherish about him.
Synchronised was not a particularly fast horse, nor the most reliable jumper of fences, and so hardly an obvious candidate for steeplechasing’s most prestigious race. But he had stamina, courage and an engine, and found in McCoy his ideal partner. It was a struggle, and an apparently forlorn one for much of the race, but McCoy kept his horse competitive despite a series of mistakes. He knew that if he could somehow stay in touch, Synchronised would find more than the leaders climbing the hill, and so it proved.
It was one of the most important victories of McCoy’s career, but it was achieved with the same tireless intensity that he has always devoted to every ride, whatever the prize or the venue. The 2,000th, 3,000th and 4,000th winners of his career came in minor races at Market Rasen, Plumpton and Towcester. His place in history was secured on the smaller stages, one day and one winner at a time, not in the spotlight of the major festivals at Cheltenham and Aintree.
Yet it would have seemed quite wrong if McCoy had left his final Festival without a winner. After two blank and frustrating days, he made all the running to take the Ryanair Chase, a Grade One event, on Uxizandre on Thursday, and then soaked up the acclaim from the grandstands all the way back to the winner’s enclosure.
“I had lots of rides coming into the week but I didn’t have any real bankers,” McCoy said afterwards. “You just keep going race after race and hope that one of them wins. It’s how my life has normally gone so there’s no point in changing it for this week.
“Cheltenham is a very special place, it’s where every jockey wants to win and I’m no different. There’s nowhere like it. National Hunt people and racing people are fantastic and they’ve always been fantastic to me. These are the days I’m going to miss, that’s for sure. As a jockey I appreciate it more than anyone.”
The reception will be more rapturous still if he can steer Carlingford Lough to victory on Friday afternoon in front of a sellout crowd. He has several more good chances on his last day as a Festival jockey too, including Hargam, in the opening Triumph Hurdle, and Ned Buntline, who is certain to start favourite for the final race, the Grand Annual Chase, which has been renamed in McCoy’s honour this year.
Carlingford Lough represents the small Irish stable of John Kiely, who has been training for more than 40 years and is closer to his 80th birthday than his 70th. Along with Many Clouds and the exciting young novice Coneygree, also from smaller, more traditional yards, he will attempt to stand up to the challenge from Mullins, Nicholls and Henderson, who have six runners between them including Silviniaco Conti and Djakadam, the first two names in the betting.
But McCoy’s name is the one that will matter as the horses and jockeys line up for the Festival’s greatest prize, with National Hunt’s most famous and successful rider in their midst for the final time.
