Tony McCoy, the champion jockey over jumps for 20 consecutive seasons before his retirement in April 2015, considered returning to the saddle “for a few spare rides” after Barry Geraghty, his replacement as the principal rider for JP McManus, suffered a recent injury. However, an actual return to action remains highly unlikely.
McCoy spoke in a revealing interview last week about his mixed feelings on his retirement, the announcement of which shocked the racing world two years ago. He told the Mail on Sunday: “I’d love it to be starting again. I’d love to have it all ahead of me. I’d give it all back tomorrow. I’d give it all back, even now, if I could even just change my name and go back riding for another year or two without anyone knowing it was me.”
Geraghty’s injury, sustained in a fall at Kempton Park on 25 February, has ruled him out of an excellent book of rides next week, prompting McCoy to suggest he briefly considered a comeback. “With Barry Geraghty injured, have I considered coming out of retirement for a few spare rides?,” McCoy said this week. “I’ve thought about it,” before adding that it is “very doubtful”.
In an interview with Great British Racing before the Cheltenham Festival, where he will be working as a pundit for ITV Racing, McCoy also said Willie Mullins’s Douvan, the hot favourite for the Queen Mother Champion Chase on Wednesday, is the horse he would most like to ride at this year’s Festival. “He looks a very special horse,” McCoy said of the seven-year-old, the winner of all 13 of his starts for Mullins since November 2014.
The former champion also picked Unowhatimeanharry, a 5-4 chance for the Stayers’ Hurdle on Thursday, as the best prospect from McManus’s strong team for the meeting, and said his Gold Cup success aboard the McManus-owned Synchronised in 2012 was the highlight of his Cheltenham Festival career.
“I was lucky,” McCoy said. “I had a few good rides at the Festival, [and] a few bad rides too. Champleve winning the Arkle [in 1998] was good, Edredon Bleu winning the Champion Chase [in 2000] was good, Wichita Lineman was pretty good winning the William Hill Trophy [in 2009] but I’d probably go for Synchronised winning the Gold Cup, because it’s the pinnacle horse race.”
