Tony McCoy is about to have his very last ride in a horse race. It is a line you will have heard before, just over four months ago, but this time the great jockey insists it will prove true and that he will hang up his boots for good after Wednesday’s Leger Legends charity race at Doncaster.
“This is it, done and dusted,” he said as he prepared himself on Tuesday. “I won’t be doing it again next year.”
Given a free hand, McCoy would probably rather have stuck by his original retirement in late April, when he wiped away tears after finishing third on Box Office in a hurdle race at Sandown.
But observers report that he was “politely coerced” into taking part today by Jack Berry, the former trainer who has spent so many years fund-raising for charities and who gave his name to the newly opened facility for injured jockeys in Yorkshire.
“It’s for a good cause,” McCoy said. “Jack’s done a lot of work for the Injured Jockeys’ Fund, he’s built a rehabilitation centre that’s second to none. The least I can do is sit on a horse for a minute and a half.”
Wednesday’s contest possibly does not count as a ‘real’ race in McCoy’s eyes, since there is only a mile to be covered and no obstacles in the way, but it appears his competitive instincts have not yet dimmed. “It’s all about winning. I couldn’t go out on a winner during my riding career, so maybe now that I’m doing this one-off at Doncaster, I can go out on a winner.”
The random draw for mounts assigned McCoy to an old ally, the trainer Brendan Powell, for whom he has already partnered 45 winners. Gannicus, the horse who may take that total to 46, is now the 5-1 favourite for Wednesday’s race.
“I hope I’ve got a chance,” McCoy reflected after sitting on the four-year-old on Tuesday morning. “He goes very well and it helps that he was a last-time-out winner, no matter what anyone says.”
Powell said of McCoy’s first acquaintance with Gannicus: “The horse didn’t run away with him, which is good. I think the jockey was blowing a bit harder than the horse.
“Look, AP’s obviously put on a bit of weight but he still looks very fit and I’m sure he is.” There has been a certain amount of jocular speculation in the racing community about whether McCoy would make the weight on Wednesday, but it certainly helps that the weights for this race have been raised by 5lb since last year.
In the words of one official, this was done “to ensure that all the competing riders would be able to do the weight”, though he declined to specify who might have been most in need of help.
Powell suggested that McCoy could “do a Seb”, a reference to Seb Sanders, who rode in a recent race in his stockinged feet because wearing boots would have put him 1lb over his allotted weight. McCoy, who has always taken pride in not putting up over weight, did not sound terribly amused by the idea.
One of his rivals is his old friend Luke Harvey, a Welsh National-winning jockey turned broadcaster. “It’ll be the first time in about four months that he’s got a stick in his hand instead of a golf club,” Harvey said.
“He’ll want to win, of course he will, but he won’t want to win more than me. I shouldn’t think it’s top of his wish list though: 20 times champion jockey and win the Leger Legends race.
“I remember riding against AP when he was probably claiming 7lb and now I’m the claimer. I’d heard about this kid who was supposed to be good, though I was told he was no good over fences. I remember him coming into the sauna at Stratford one time and I acknowledged him, I probably grunted at him or something. Now I have to bow and curtsy before him but back then I barely gave him the time of day.”
Harvey offered an insight into the hardships facing former jockeys who agree to take part in such events. “I’m the lightest I’ve been since I stopped riding, 10st 1lb. When you’ve given up as long ago as I have, at least 15 years ago, it takes a lot of effort in a short space of time to get you fit, especially if you’ve just recently done eight hours in a car to get up to Sedgefield and back, eating sausage rolls and scotch eggs and packets of crisps on the way.
“At AP’s leaving-do the other day in Ireland, Johnny Murtagh gave me a bear hug, because we have a bit of banter on Twitter and so on. Honestly, there will not be a fitter human being in that race than Johnny.
“But it’s not the fucking Topham, it’s a straight mile, there’s not even a bend to ride around. I’m fit enough if the horse is fit enough and I’d love to be in a finish with AP and Johnny.”
McCoy’s feeling on the matter was typically pithy: “If I get beaten by Luke Harvey, that’s when I’ll know for sure I made the right decision to stop.”
