It has been a long goodbye but now even Tony McCoy himself is starting to realise that the time has arrived to close the door. After drawing a blank in three races here at Ayr on Saturday, the number of rides left in his extraordinary, record-breaking career is down to single figures. One day more, at Sandown next Saturday, and McCoy will be the retired former champion jockey.
At least the season is changing around him, the lengthening days and rising temperatures a subliminal prop as he prepares to quit the only job he has ever known. The timing feels as right as it ever could. After a career that has set records that may never be approached, never mind broken, McCoy’s retirement seems as finely judged as some of his most memorable winning rides.
McCoy was not the focus of attention here on Saturday as he was at Aintree last week, when he rode Shutthefrontdoor, the favourite, in his last Grand National. He missed out on his intended ride aboard Benvolio in the Scottish equivalent, won by the 25-1 outsider Wayward Prince, when it was scratched on Friday morning due to the fast ground. The same warm weather that frustrated the champion jockey was enjoyed by a capacity crowd of 16,500, with McCoy’s last rides at the Scottish track passing relatively unnoticed, though he received a warm ovation on the way to post for his final ride of the afternoon.
“It’s been sinking in for a while, but the closer it gets, the more real it is,” McCoy said. “I felt it probably for the first time coming out of Cheltenham on Thursday. I was just sat with my two valets after getting changed and we were sat all three of us in a corner, and thinking that I was never going to sit there again. I’ve had moments before that but that was the first moment that I found it tough.
“It’s not easy but it’s going to be more difficult next Saturday when I’m not riding any more. For the last week or the last two weeks, I’ve been trying to purposely wean myself off it, because I thought it might be better to be a bit more selective and get used to the fact that I’m not going racing any more.”
McCoy could have ridden at Perth this week but expects instead to wait for the season’s finale at Sandown and, hopefully, one last day in the sun. It may be that the final winner of his career, the last of more than 4,300, is already in the book. And having achieved so much, he is also about to take his leave on his own terms.
There is a long list of jump jockeys who woke up one morning and realised that they could not face their job any more, and others whose bodies – and doctors – made the decision for them. Richard Dunwoody, who was forced into retirement by injury, spent years trying to rediscover the buzz of riding over jumps, unable to mourn his lost career and move on.
“I don’t know if that [a sudden decision to quit] would ever have happened to me,” he says. “I’m not saying that I’m different from any other sports person, but a lot of them carry on and then the dip comes and then they retire. I always had fear in my life that I wouldn’t be as good as I was, or that the dip would come and then I’d retire. I wanted to retire while I was good and before people thought that I wasn’t as good as I was. You have to be stubborn. For a lot of days, I wish I wasn’t doing it and that I hadn’t said it, but I’m not changing my mind, I’m too stubborn to do that. I wanted it to be like that. I wanted it to hurt.
“That was the reason why I announced my retirement when I did, because I thought it might be better mentally to prepare myself to be able to cope with it, rather than just go to Sandown next Saturday and say: ‘I’m retiring,’ and be done and walk away the next day, not being a jockey any more.
“Hopefully it was good for racing as well but I did do it for my own benefit and peace of mind, to think that I could mentally adjust. Racing has been brilliant to me, it’s been a brilliant way of life for 20-odd years and having spoken to my agent, Dave Roberts, and to JP [McManus, who has retained him to ride his horses for 10 years], this is what we felt was probably the best.
“I just thought it was probably the right thing to do, with another two and a half months of the season, and not just disappear. I’ve been able to ride at the big meetings as well, and mentally that was the best way of coping with it.”
McCoy will host a party at home for family, friends and former weighing-room colleagues on his first day as an ex-jockey, and then travel to Punchestown’s Festival meeting to see how he copes with going racing as a spectator.
“I’ll probably go to Ireland on Monday [27 April] to see a few of the lads and Robbie McNamara [the injured jockey] and JT [McNamara, who was paralysed in a fall at Cheltenham in March 2014], and then go to Punchestown for a few days with JP,” McCoy said. “Someone said that my rehab should start straight away rather than to leave it for a while. That’s the best way to cure something, is to get straight back in.
“A few people wanted me to go to Perth next week but I don’t know if it would be more torture than it’s worth. I think I’ll be better off having a quiet week and going to Sandown. If you go to Perth, you could think: ‘Why not do one more week and go to Punchestown?’
“There’s no end to it, there’s always a temptation. If you do that, you may well not retire at all. But it has to hurt, that’s the most difficult part.”
