WINNER

MY RACING LIFE

A.P. McCoy
with Charlie Connelly

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 To Eve and Archie

© AP Enterprises Limited 2015

The right of Tony McCoy to be identified as the author

of this work has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2015

by Orion Books
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 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vii

ONE Box Office, Sandown Park, 25 April 2015 1

TWO Mr Mole, Newbury, 7 February 2015 27
THREE Legal Steps, Thurles, 26 March 1992 63
FOUR Certain Angle, Stratford, 31 May 1996 93
FIVE Gloria Victis, Cheltenham, 16 March 2000 119
SIX Valfonic, Warwick, 2 April 2002 141
SEVEN Abutilon, Fontwell, 9 November 2007 159
EIGHT Arnold Layne, Warwick, 12 January 2008 185
NINE Don’t Push It, Aintree, 10 April 2010 213
TEN Synchronised, Cheltenham, 16 March 2012 230
ELEVEN Mountain Tunes, Towcester, 7 November 2013 266
TWELVE Schooling horses, Jackdaws Castle,
7 May 2015 292

Notable Career Feats 313

Index 319

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 ONE

Box Office, Sandown Park

25 April 2015

Two jumps from home the realisation hit me.

I’d been holding Box Office on the inside of a tightly bunched
field and he was going well. After clearing the third last I eased
across to the outside tucking in behind Richard Johnson, whom
I could see was building to a strong finish on Brother Tedd and
I wanted to go with him. Box Office was strongly in conten-
tion coming round the final bend for home and I was sensing
a winner. As we approached the second last, however, both
Brother Tedd and Grand Maestro began to pull away from the
pack and, jumping in third place and coming up the hill towards
the finish, it became clear that Box Office didn’t have an answer
on the day.
It was only then, when I had to reluctantly admit to myself
the race was lost, that something other than the thunder of
hooves and the rhythm of my own breathing muscled in on my
thought process.

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 WINNER

This is it, said a voice in my head, this really is the end.

I was now a matter of seconds away from the moment all
the numbers stopped for ever. My career total of National Hunt
winners would remain at 4,348 after this, my 17,546th ride. I’d
never add to my twenty champion jockey titles; I’d never win
another Grand National or Cheltenham Gold Cup. All the stats,
the numbers that had governed my life for the last two decades,
they were just a few hundred yards from being stilled for ever.
My whole career, my whole adult life even, had been built on
making those numbers click upwards as fast as I could but in a
little over a couple of furlongs they would never move again.
I cleared the final fence of my racing career, saw the two lead-
ers pull further away and became aware of a couple of horses
in the corner of my vision. There was no way they were getting
past. Box Office might not have had enough left in the tank to
win that day but I was sure as hell that I’d ride the final furlongs
of my career as hard as any I’d ever ridden before. I’d clocked up
somewhere in the region of 40,000 miles of racing during my
career, equivalent to going twice around the world, and now I
gritted my teeth, reached for my stick and knuckled down for
the last two furlongs of my racing life.

It probably won’t surprise you to hear that deciding to retire

was the toughest decision I’ve ever had to make. I imagine some
sportsmen and women begin to notice things about their per-
formance and sense the end coming: the reflexes aren’t quite
as sharp, the eye isn’t as quick as it once was, injuries become
more common and take longer to heal and the enthusiasm for
the battle is dimmer than it used to be. They’re aware of the
questions and comments even if they remain unspoken. They

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 A.P. McCoy

see it in the eyes of the journalists and fans: how much longer
can they go on? Are their best days behind them? Shouldn’t they
be thinking of calling it a day? As a professional sportsperson,
whatever sport it might be, it can be very easy to keep going
until you’ve passed your peak because it’s hard to admit to your-
self that decline has set in and you’ll never be as good as you
once were.
I experienced none of that, thank goodness. It would have
been my worst nightmare: the whispers, the doubts, the pity –
especially the pity – and it was something I was determined to
avoid. Fortunately I was able to go out at the very top, and being
able to say that makes me a very, very lucky man indeed.
Although it had come as a surprise to everyone, even those
closest to me, I’d actually laid the foundations of my retirement
several years before that emotional afternoon at Sandown.
There were times in between when it had passed clean out of
my head, there were times when I told myself I must be mad
to even consider it, but I’ve always had a strong stubborn streak
running through me. Sometimes it’s a good thing, other times
it’s definitely not such a good thing, but that stubbornness was
the reason I was able to retire when I did and in the manner I did:
on my own terms.
The roots of that unforgettable Saturday afternoon reached
back to 2010. I’d just become champion jockey for the fifteenth
time and won the Grand National for the first time on Don’t
Push It. I was thirty-five years old and having an amazing year,
one that would be crowned by receiving an OBE and being
voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year. It may seem strange
that such a successful year should have triggered thoughts of
retirement, but it occurred to me that if I kept going the way

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 WINNER

I was for another five years I’d have reached twenty jockeys’
championships in 2015. It felt like a realistic goal: I was feeling
good, riding as well as ever, twenty was a good, round number
and I like good, round numbers. I would also be forty that year,
another good, round number. I’d still be performing at the high-
est level and would be retiring on a considerable career high.
It felt like the perfect scenario and was practical, sensible and
attainable. I filed it away in the back of my mind and set about
the business of riding as many winners as I could.
Time passed. I won more jockeys’ championships to bring
that landmark figure of twenty ever closer. I was still working
hard, riding plenty of winners and still enjoying racing as much
as I ever had, yet always there, lurking at the back of my mind,
was this thought of retiring at twenty titles. The very factors I’d
identified as governing the decision also succeeded in making
the decision more difficult: how could I possibly walk away from
the job I love when everything was going so well? Surely I was
mad to even think about retiring? Surely I’d just be cutting off
my nose to spite my face (which is, incidentally, one of the few
injuries I’ve never suffered)?
All I could do was keep reminding myself that it wouldn’t
last. What I dreaded more than anything was reaching a point
where I’d begin to hear people saying I wasn’t as good as I once
was, that I wasn’t the jockey I used to be. I couldn’t bear that,
it would have left me absolutely distraught. That’s why it was
definitely the best thing for me to retire at the very top, on my
own terms, while still being the best jockey I could be. I don’t
mind telling you there were times in my final season where
it was absolutely tearing me up inside having to stick to that
decision, but my innate stubbornness was always there, like

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 A.P. McCoy

a rock, anchoring my thinking and ultimately vindicating my

judgement.
In April 2014 I secured my nineteenth jockeys’ championship.
I’d not discussed with anyone the possibility of retiring since I’d
first thought about it, but at the Punchestown Festival that year
I was at the home of my boss J.P. McManus and I broached the
subject with him. I told him I was thinking of retiring at the end
of the following season because I wanted to go if I was still at
the top and lucky enough to be champion jockey for the twenti-
eth time. I’ve always looked up to JP and valued his advice, and
although my revelation must have come as a surprise to him,
he was characteristically calm, rational and honest, as he has
been throughout our time together. What he said was simple
but exactly what I needed to hear: not to make any rash deci-
sions and to ensure I did whatever made me happy. It had to be
my decision and nobody else’s, he said, and I had to do what I
thought was right.

I made a particularly good start to the 2014–15 racing season.

I always liked to work extra hard in the opening weeks of the
campaign, racing at two meetings in a day if I could, haring
around the country clocking up the mileage in an effort to ride
as many winners as I could as early in the season as I could. Ob-
viously I wanted to win all year round, but racking up a big pile
of winners at the start of the season helped to put anyone else’s
aspirations of being champion jockey clean out of their heads. I
tried to sicken the other lads as soon as possible; in effect trying
to ensure there was no competition for the champion jockey
title.
I was very lucky in that my agent, Dave Roberts, was brilliant

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 WINNER

at accommodating the kind of schedule I needed and almost

psychic in the way he booked the rides that were right for me.
Throughout my career I’ve been very fortunate in the people
I’ve had on my side, and Dave Roberts has been a constant
virtually from the time I first arrived in England as a teenager.
Dave booked every ride of every jockeys’ championship for
me and in all the years we worked together I never once asked
him why I was riding a particular horse, nor did I ask him why
I wasn’t riding a horse. As far as I was concerned it was Dave’s
job to get me on the best horses to make me successful and keep
me winning and that’s exactly what he did. I trusted Dave to
come up with the rides, he trusted me to keep making the most
of them.
I also benefited from another’s misfortune: Jason Maguire,
who had been second to me in the jockeys’ championship a
couple of years earlier, was injured in a bad fall at Stratford on
the Monday before the Cheltenham Festival – the poor guy had
to be resuscitated on the track and had half his liver cut out.
Jason was Donald McCain’s stable jockey, and his enforced
absence and that of his regular back-up rider Timmy Murphy
with a wrist injury meant that I was able to ride a number of
winners for Donald in the early part of the campaign. Thanks
to Dave’s astuteness I had also begun riding for John Ferguson,
one of the up-and-coming trainers over jumps. John is perhaps
best known for being Sheikh Mohammed’s bloodstock adviser
but he’s a very successful man in his own right and I rode a good
twenty winners for him in the early part of the campaign. All
these factors combined in my favour and almost before I knew
it I’d reached fifty winners for the season faster than ever before,
with a double at Worcester on 10 June.

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 A.P. McCoy

I always set myself goals in life and am always wanting to

challenge myself, to push myself further and harder, so when I
rode my fastest fiftieth I thought, well, that’s a pretty good start.
I looked at the calendar, sketched out the season ahead in my
mind and it occurred to me that if I could maintain even some-
thing close to the number of winners I was riding then I had a
really good chance of achieving an unprecedented 300 winners
in a season. That would be some achievement in any circum-
stances, but if this was to be my final season as a professional
jockey it would be the ultimate send-off and the best way to
show people I was going on my terms.
A big step towards that goal would be to ride my fastest
hundredth, which I managed on Arabic History, one of John
Ferguson’s horses, at Newton Abbot on 21 August. I remember
that meeting particularly well because after I’d won I did the ‘ice
bucket challenge’ that was sweeping the country at the time and
for which I’d been nominated by Ruby Walsh. It was a warm
summer evening at the end of a hot, busy day so it turned out
I barely fl inched as the buckets of ice-cold water hit me. I quite
enjoyed it to be honest, I found it refreshing, which I’m pretty
sure wasn’t Ruby’s intention.
As I headed home that night it struck me that I was in a bit
of a strange situation. Here I was, forty years old and riding my
fastest hundredth winner ever, doing better than I had in any
previous season. I already had a hundred in the bag and there
were more than enough rides left in the season to make 300
winners a very real possibility. While an achievement like that
would be a perfect landmark on which to retire, it also made me
wonder if I was mad to even think of calling time on my career
when I was clearly riding as well as ever, if not better.

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My wife Chanelle was waiting for me when I got home and I

told her I’d just ridden the fastest hundredth of my career.
‘Anthony, that’s great!’ she said.
‘Yeah, it is,’ I replied, ‘I think I might be getting the hang of
this riding thing at last.’
She laughed, and I hesitated for a moment, uncertain whether
to say what was on my mind.
‘You know something, Chanelle?’ I said. ‘I think I’m actually
getting better. I think I’m improving.’
She turned her head to look sideways at me as if to say, ‘you’re
losing the run of yourself, McCoy’. But it was true. I was forty
years old, had been riding professionally for two decades yet I
was convinced I was becoming a better jockey. I thought back
to the conversation I’d had with JP four months earlier when
he’d advised me to do whatever was right for me. Deep down
I knew retiring was the correct thing to do and had been my
long-term plan for four years, but having made such a fantastic
start to the season I wondered just what I might still achieve. I
lay awake that night, thinking about how 300 winners in a season
was definitely attainable. It had never been done before, over
jumps or on the flat, and if I carried on the form I was in then
it was a landmark well within reach. What a way that would
be to retire, the ultimate high. The more I pondered on it the
more determined I became: I’d work my socks off and reach 300
winners. It was a tall order and would take a lot of racing, but at
the very least it would show that in my twentieth season I was
still the best I could be.
There were smaller increments to achieve first. My next goal
was to ride my fastest 150th, and when I arrived at Worcester on
9 October I was well on target. But that was about to change.

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 A.P. McCoy

Late in the day I was riding Keep Presenting in a maiden

hurdle in aid – ironically as it turned out – of the Injured Jockeys
Fund. At the first hurdle the horse seemed to frighten himself
somehow: he didn’t refuse as such, but suddenly jammed on the
brakes without any warning or apparent reason, jerking to the
left as he took off. He hit the hurdle at a strange angle and down
we went. I hit the deck and the horse landed sideways on top of
me. Fortunately he was OK and jumped up pretty swiftly, but I’d
had all the breath knocked out of me and knew straightaway I’d
done myself some damage. As well as finding it hard to breathe
I was in pretty serious pain from my ribs and my shoulder. Any
jockey likes to get up as quickly as possible after a fall, psycho-
logically you want to do it and it also lets everyone know you’re
OK, but I was very sore in the ribs and shoulder, could hardly
move and could do nothing more than lie there groaning. As it
happened, in the act of falling we’d brought down Noel Fehily
on St Johns Point. Noel was fine and was standing up dusting
himself down when he heard me moaning and came over to see
how I was.
‘Are you OK, champ?’ he asked.
I tried to raise myself to look at him but couldn’t move.
‘No,’ I gasped, still struggling to catch my breath, ‘get the
doctor, Noel.’
I didn’t realise at the time but I must have got a kick in the
mouth on the way down because there was blood coming out of
it as I spoke; it can’t have been a pretty sight.
‘Get the doctor,’ I repeated, ‘get the doctor, Noel.’
The medical convoy must have had a restricted view of the
incident: it seems they’d only noticed one horse fall and once
they’d seen Noel jump to his feet they carried on following the

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 WINNER

race: they simply hadn’t seen me go down. From my prone posi-

tion I watched Noel jumping up and down and waving his arms,
screaming at them as they drove on unawares into the distance.
He walked back over to me.
‘Noel,’ I gasped, ‘where the fuck’s the doctor?’
‘They drove past,’ he said.
‘What the fuck do you mean they drove past, Noel?’
I must have been getting my breath back by this stage as I was
getting up a good head of steam swearing at poor Noel.
‘Fuck me, Noel,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t want you saving my fuck-
ing life, would I?’
When the race came round on its next circuit the medical
staff finally noticed me on the ground and the doctor came run-
ning over. It happened to be Doc Pritchard, my own GP who’s
done an amazing job of patching me up and getting me back on
horses over the years.
‘Right,’ he said as he bustled up, ‘what’s wrong?’
‘I can’t breathe, doc,’ I wheezed, in pretty serious pain, ‘I’ve
punctured my lung enough times to know what it feels like. This
is definitely a punctured lung for starters.’
‘OK,’ he said, ‘lie still and we’ll get the stretcher for you.’
‘I’m not getting on the stretcher,’ I said. I was already thinking
about my 300 winners and was determined to get up and walk
away from this, work through the pain and carry on racing.
‘Don’t worry,’ the doctor said. ‘I’ll help lift you up onto it.’
‘No,’ I snapped, still spitting out blood, ‘no stretcher, it’s mor-
phine I need, just give me some morphine.’
I held up my arm, he pulled up the sleeve of my colours and
gave me a shot of morphine. I think I was also given oxygen;
either way, I began to see a little better through the fog of pain.

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 A.P. McCoy

‘Now,’ he said, ‘I need you to get on the stretcher and get in

the ambulance.’
‘I’m not getting in the ambulance.’
‘A P, you need to go to the hospital.’
‘I’m not going to any fucking hospital.’
Lying there on the cold ground by that first hurdle at Worces-
ter, deep down I knew I was in big trouble. But there was
absolutely no way I was going to admit that to anyone, especially
myself. All that was going through my mind was the number of
winners I was riding, and staying on course to reach that magical
300, so there was absolutely no way I was going to concede to
any kind of medical advice no matter how sound and sensible
it was. All I could think about was keeping going through the
pain and riding more winners. Even the simple act of getting
into the ambulance would have been conceding defeat. This was
going to be a victory of mind over matter and I could handle any
amount of pain and still ride. Nothing was going to stop me.
Poor Doc Pritchard. I wasn’t going to do anything he wanted
me to do. Eventually I got the medical team to help me up and I
agreed to go to the ambulance as long as I walked there myself.
But if anyone thought this meant I was going to the hospital
they were sadly mistaken.
‘Take me back to the weighing room,’ I said as I climbed in to
the back of the vehicle. The doctor went paler than I was.
‘A P, you have to go to the hospital,’ he said.
I looked him right in the eye and was as firm as I could poss-
ibly be.
‘Doc, I’m not going to hospital. I’m going to the weighing
room.’
Sure enough I got my way and lumbered into the weighing

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room carrying a drip, got someone to make me a cup of tea with

ten sugars, showered, got changed and was about to go home
when the doc came back to tell me that my breathing difficulties
meant my oxygen levels weren’t high enough and he was genu-
inely worried. He told me I simply had to go to the hospital.
I thought for a moment.
‘OK, well, if I’m going you’re coming with me.’
I was jabbing a forefinger at his chest as if I was pretty much
blaming the guy for my injuries. Doc Pritchard has known me
for years, he’s done amazing things for me, and here I was, wild-
eyed, finger-jabbing and virtually holding him responsible for
Keep Presenting falling at the first.
He brought me to the hospital at Gloucester and the x-ray re-
sults confirmed what I’d suspected: I’d dislocated my collarbone,
punctured a lung and broken two ribs. As dislocated collarbones
go it wasn’t too bad, but the doc told me I couldn’t ride for a few
days, at least until my lung was all right again.
Chanelle came to collect me from Gloucester hospital and
on the way home I had all sorts of mad things going through
my head. I was adamant I couldn’t miss any days’ racing if I
was going to ride 300 winners. There are 365 days in a year, I
surmised, which only leaves 65 possible days without a winner.
It was simply a question of numbers, all other considerations,
not least injury, were entirely irrelevant. Single-minded to the
point of obsession, I was going to reach the target whatever
it took.
Doc Pritchard was firm, though: it would be dangerous for me
to ride again before my lung was recovered. He’d always been
pretty accommodating of my flying in the face of his medical
advice and riding through injuries, so I knew he really meant it.

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 A.P. McCoy

Rest, he said, get plenty of deep breaths and get yourself feeling
good again before you get back on a horse. I shouldn’t think
about racing again until the middle of the following week at the
earliest.
I spent a brooding, anxious and restless weekend thinking
about the winners I was missing. Sitting at home while there
was racing going on around the country just made no sense to
me. On the Monday morning I was still sore and breathing heav-
ily when Dave rang and asked how I was feeling.
‘Not good, Dave,’ I wheezed. ‘But I want to ride tomorrow.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said, ‘because I’ve got three or four
really good rides at Huntingdon for you if you’re up to it.’
Straightaway I rang Doc Pritchard and told him I really needed
to ride the next day. There was a weary sigh from the other end
of the line.
‘OK, I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘If you have an x-ray now and
it shows things have healed enough, then you can think about
riding. But only if things have improved enough.’
He’d barely finished speaking when I was out of the door and
on my way to meet him at the Ridgeway Hospital in Swindon.
I had the x-ray, the doc placed it on the light box and pursed his
lips.
‘You’re not far away,’ he conceded, ‘but as things stand, look-
ing at this you really can’t ride at Huntingdon tomorrow.’
‘Not far away’ sounded good to me. Good enough to ride at
Huntingdon, in fact.
‘When you say not far away . . .’ I raised an eyebrow. He
sighed again.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s a chance you might be OK in the
morning but right now it’s just not there.’

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‘What if I had another x-ray later today? Things might have

got better by then.’
‘They might,’ he conceded with a shrug, adding, ‘OK, we’ll
give it a go, but there’s no guarantee there’ll be any improve-
ment by this evening.’
Furtively, I rang Dave from the corridor and told him he could
put me down for the horses at Huntingdon the following day,
returned to the hospital late in the afternoon, had another x-ray,
and to my delight the doctor took a look, shook his head slowly
with a mixture of disbelief and resignation and cleared me to
ride.
Three of my four rides at Huntingdon won, so easily in fact
that anyone could have been on them, but the pay-off was that
my collarbone was absolute agony all day. I’d seen the course
doctor before racing and had the usual check-ups and he said
I was fine to ride which I suppose strictly speaking I was in a
medical sense. I’d even managed to do a few press-ups in front
of him. However, by the time I got home that night I was in
desperate pain that even the extensive range of painkillers in my
bathroom cabinet couldn’t temper.
Despite the pain all I could think about was the possibility of
riding my 150th winner the next day at Wetherby, where Dave
had booked me some more great rides. Although my collarbone
had been excruciating, riding those three winners at Hunting-
don had only made me more determined. After all, if I’d taken
Doc Pritchard’s advice at face value and not gone to Huntingdon
I’d be three winners down by now. As it was I felt I was properly
back on track, making up for the rides I’d missed the weekend
after Worcester. In terms of winners I was still three and a half
weeks ahead of my 2002 season when I’d broken Sir Gordon

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 A.P. McCoy

Richards’ record and reached my highest ever season total of

289 wins. I have a commemorative print in a frame at home that
hangs at the bottom of the stairs and lists all my winners from
that season, the names of the horses and the dates. Every time I
came down in the morning I was checking how I compared with
that season and here I was, nearly a month ahead of schedule
and showing no sign of losing momentum as long as I could just
keep getting on horses and riding winners.
I got up the morning after Huntingdon, went downstairs,
double-checked the 2002 print, and set out for Wetherby where
Dave had scheduled four good rides. My collarbone was still very
sore but I was in good spirits as my driver Steve ‘Scouse’ Kelly
and I headed for Yorkshire. In the first race I was riding a horse
of Jonjo O’Neill’s called Goodwood Mirage. He was really keen,
a hard puller, a free-going horse that really wanted to get on with
it. On a normal day I’d have been in my element on Goodwood
Mirage but on this day his enthusiasm had me in absolute agony.
With every stride I could feel the pull on my collarbone and the
pain shot right through me. With two left to jump I saw a gap in
the middle of the field and knew Goodwood Mirage had enough
for us to win, and win comfortably. We cleared the last hurdle
almost neck and neck with Lightning Rod but the way the horse
was motoring I knew it was ours. We were a couple of lengths
clear when I picked up my stick to give him a smack and drive
him out, but just as I did so I felt my collarbone go pop. I’d dislo-
cated it again. The pain was unbelievable, like an electric current
zinging through my upper body. I transferred the stick to my left
hand but it wasn’t nearly as effective allowing both Lightning
Rod and Tidal Wave to come back strongly and we only just
held them off on the line. I finished the race, came back into the

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winner’s enclosure wincing and gasping, almost nauseous with

the pain, and the first thing I said to Jonjo was, ‘My collarbone’s
fucked.’
Not the ideal way to mark my 150th winner of the season.
I weighed in, and when I went to take my colours off I realised
just how bad things were. I couldn’t get my silks off. I physically
couldn’t lift my arm up, it was like it was paralysed. Grudgingly
I had to tell Jonjo I was too sore to ride again that day. To add
insult to this latest injury, the three other horses I had that day
all won; one was even a walkover in a novice chase from which
all the other runners had been withdrawn – all I’d have had to do
was ride down to the last fence and ride back, as long as I was on
the horse it didn’t matter. In terms of the jockeys’ championship
and my 300 it would have been a win that counted the same as the
hardest fought short head. Missing out on those three winners
absolutely fried my mind. Instead of going home feeling good
about reaching 150 wins for the season faster than ever before, I
arrived back absolutely in bits at the lost opportunities and the
prospect of missing more racing, thanks to my collarbone.
Doc Pritchard had recommended Dr Julian Widdowson to me,
the Bath Rugby Club doctor with huge experience of that kind
of injury, so I went to see him the next day at his clinic outside
Bath. Julian examined me, took another x-ray – my collarbone
was being photographed so often at this point I began to worry
it might take out some kind of privacy injunction against me
– and told me I should rest it for at least a week. I’d been in so
much pain with it that when Julian asked me about my broken
ribs I realised I’d almost forgotten about them. He suggested a
procedure in which he took blood out of my arm and spun it in
a centrifuge to separate the white and red cells, leaving plasma

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 A.P. McCoy

in between. Injecting the plasma into the injury stimulates the

healing: it’s totally legal, they do it with the rugby players, and it
did seem to help my ribs heal more quickly. But the collarbone
meant I still faced a whole week out. A week of potential win-
ners. A week that pushed the magic 300 further away.
I was back in the saddle again at Exeter on 4 November and
managed to ride a winner in my first race, on a horse of JP’s
called Jollyallan. My joy at returning to action with a win proved
to be short-lived, however. My next ride was If In Doubt for
Philip Hobbs in a novice chase, the horse’s first race over fences.
He took the first fine, but there was a large shadow in front of the
second fence, ahead of the ditch. If In Doubt decided to come
up on the shadow, which was a long way in front of the fence.
This meant he breasted the fence itself, landing in the middle
of it, stopping dead and catapulting me forward over his head. I
speared into the ground with my shoulder and collarbone bear-
ing the brunt of the fall. Gingerly, I picked myself up, put my
hand on it and could immediately tell it was absolutely massive.
I couldn’t countenance missing any more racing so when the
doctor came rushing over to see if I was OK I said I was fine,
went back to the weighing room, took off my colours and saw
my valet Graham’s eyebrows shoot up when he saw the state of
my shoulder.
‘Jesus, that’s fucked,’ he said. ‘Better get you to the doctor.’
‘No,’ I replied, tight-lipped with pain and determination, ‘no
doctor. I’m riding in the next race.’
Graham looked at me askance, as if to say, ‘your head’s gone,
mate’, and he was right – my head had gone. In my obsession to
reach 300 winners I’d completely lost it, lost all sense of perspec-
tive and all sense of the right thing to do. I was in such bad form,

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raging against my body for letting me down, raging against the

very thought of being forced to sit out any more racing, that the
anger replaced the adrenalin and I went out to ride Bobcatbilly
in the next race for Ian Williams purely out of temper. Bobcat-
billy was a horse on which I’d had a good few wins in the past
but that day he finished ninth in a field of twelve purely because
my head was completely in the wrong place.
When I got home my head was spinning with the mixture of
pain and determination not to miss a single ride. All I could think
about was that magical, unprecedented figure of 300 winners.
Chanelle came into the room while I was icing my shoulder.
‘My God, look at the state of that!’ she exclaimed, horrified,
and asked what I intended to do. I think she meant was I going
straight to the hospital or was I going to wait until the morning
instead. Neither option had even crossed my mind.
‘I’m going racing tomorrow,’ I replied, tersely. I had a couple
of good rides booked at Chepstow and there was no way I was
going to miss them.
‘Anthony, you’re off your head.’
‘I don’t care,’ I snapped, ‘I’m going racing.’
Sure enough I went to Chepstow the next day and rode a
horse in the first race called Arzal. I finished second and it was an
absolutely horrific ride. I was riding Arzal for Harry Whittington
who’d only really just started out as a trainer and I felt awful on
the horse. I felt bad for Harry afterwards because I shouldn’t
really have been riding. But my head was wrecked; I was so ob-
sessed with not missing a single day’s racing, with trying to ride
300 winners, that I was going to go out and get on a horse no
matter what kind of a state I was in.
I ended the day finishing second in a bumper, on Winter Walk,

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 A.P. McCoy

a better ride than I gave Arzal but on another day I’d have won.
Clearly I was in big trouble with my injury and even I, in the
midst of my self-destructive obsession, had to concede that I
couldn’t just ride through the pain barrier this time.
I went home via Julian Widdowson’s clinic and explained how
my already troublesome collarbone had borne the brunt of a
heavy fall the previous day and was giving me a lot of pain. He
took an x-ray, put the print on his light box and when I saw him
practically do a double take at what he saw I knew it must be
bad.
‘I don’t know how you’ve managed it, AP,’ he said, ‘but you’ve
broken your dislocated collarbone.’
He kept staring at the x-ray.
‘That is almost impossible to do,’ he added.
When you dislocate your collarbone, the impact on your
shoulder pushes the collarbone out through the joint. The
reason it dislocates in those circumstances is because it’s almost
too strong to break. Either way, you break it or dislocate it, one
or the other. Definitely not both.
‘I have absolutely no idea how you’ve managed to break a dis-
located collarbone,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It should have just
dislocated further, pushed further out, not broken altogether.’
Uncommon injury or not, I knew this latest development
meant a potentially lengthy lay-off from racing, a realisation that
hit me ten times harder than the ground at Exeter. This meant
the possibility of weeks away from the saddle. Weeks. Maybe
I could have coped with a few days out over the course of the
season and still made it to 300, but a long injury lay-off gave me
no chance. I travelled home from Bath in a daze, came through
the door, barely acknowledged Chanelle, went straight up to the

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bedroom and cried my eyes out. I felt like the whole world was
collapsing around me. That might sound faintly ridiculous in
the great scheme of things, but remember that nobody has ever
ridden 300 winners in a season. I’d have been the first, and good-
ness knows how long it might have been before somebody else
got there too, years, decades even. That was half my retirement
goal, people seeing how good I still was, what I could still achieve
and what an achievement that would have been. It wasn’t an ego
thing, far from it, but riding a triple century of winners at forty
years of age would have qualified me to say there you go, I can
still do it, thanks for everything, goodbye.
I still had it. Not only that, I was getting better. That’s why the
injury hit me so hard, that’s why the self-imposed target of 300
winners had been so important to me, that’s why obsession had
driven me to the extremes of what I could bear in terms of phys-
ical pain. I wouldn’t have minded quite so much if I’d missed out
simply by not winning enough races, but to be scuppered by an
injury, and a freak injury at that, just wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair at
all. I buried my face in the bedclothes and bawled my eyes out at
the sheer injustice of it all. It was over. There was no consoling
me.
Looking back now I see that night as a watershed moment.
I knew I couldn’t reach the target I’d set myself and I knew I
now faced an enforced absence from the saddle. I needed to get
my head straight and the best way to do that was to put some
distance between me and the entire situation. So I took a holiday.
I went to Barbados for eight days and got a bit of heat in my
bones which was great and helped my recovery immensely. It
also gave me a psychological break from racing which, consider-
ing the state of my head over the previous couple of weeks, was

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 A.P. McCoy

equally important: I needed to recuperate mentally as much as

physically.
Coming back took three weeks altogether, in which time I’d
realised there was no point in rushing back into the saddle now
I’d had to accept my tilt at 300 had gone. I was up to 152 wins and
my nearest challenger in the jockeys’ championship was Richard
Johnson with seventy-five, so I was far enough ahead to ensure
my collarbone could properly heal before putting it on the line
again. Thank goodness for that flying start to the season. I still
missed a lot of good racing as a result though, including the first
big meeting of the season the Paddy Power Open Meeting at
Cheltenham, but having that break from racing was unquestion-
ably the right thing to do for my mind and my body.
When I returned to racing after the injury I had a very dry
spell: at one stage I only rode two winners in the space of eleven
days, a horrible hiccup which put paid to any little glimmer of
hope that might have remained of still making it to 300. Earlier in
the season Dave had told me that in one week I’d ridden nineteen
winners, something I don’t think I’d done in my career before,
so to ride two in eleven days plonked me right at the other end
of the spectrum. I can’t say for sure why I had such a barren
spell but I think maybe I was struggling for a goal. I’d been so
fixated on the 300 that once it had gone I was casting around for
a new aim. The jockeys’ championship wasn’t over but I was so
far ahead that even though it wasn’t quite mathematically in the
bag, another fifty winners or so and it was definitely over. But
what then?
I went to Ireland over Christmas feeling a little listless, almost
in a kind of limbo. Having the 300 taken away from me had set
my retirement thoughts awry. If I’d gone on to ride 300 how could

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 WINNER

I not have retired? Without that talismanic figure in front of me

I faced four months without a goal, without an ultimate prize
to aim for. I had dinner with JP and his son Kieran at Kieran’s
house in Dublin. Once we’d eaten I pursed my lips, turned to JP
and reiterated that I was considering retiring at the end of the
season. Even though we’d discussed it briefly the previous spring
I think he was a little taken aback. He’d seen I was having a great
season and was still riding well so it must have come as a bit of a
surprise to learn that I was still thinking of going through with
it. My mind wasn’t 100 per cent made up at that point, but I was
becoming more and more convinced that retiring was the right
thing to do. JP in his wisdom said again, see how you feel, you
don’t have to make any decisions yet, and I managed to put it out
of my mind for the next month or so. But the more I thought
about it the more convinced I became that it was the right course
of action. It got to the stage by the end of January 2015 when I
realised that the main thing that was turning over in my mind
wasn’t whether to retire but how to go about it.
As I drew closer to 200 winners I began to think seriously
about whether to announce my retirement in advance or just
get to Sandown on the last day of the season and come out with
it there and then. Having spent so long mulling over retirement
in an abstract sense it felt odd to be weighing it up on a practical
level. I rang JP after racing at Kempton on 6 February, where I’d
won for him on a really nice horse called Minella Rocco in a nov-
ices’ hurdle, to sound him out on what was the best way forward.
I told him I was considering announcing my retirement when I’d
reached 200 winners but wondered whether I might be better
off leaving it until the end of the season at Sandown, when I’d
almost certainly be presented with the champion jockey trophy.

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 A.P. McCoy

Perhaps, I said, it might be best for me mentally to reveal that I

was retiring and have months of preparation for it rather than
being the only person who knew it was coming, nursing this
huge secret and having to keep it under wraps. Also, reaching
200 winners is a decent achievement in anyone’s book. It’s a nice
round number, and I’d feel like I was making the announcement
on a high as well as heading for retiring as twenty-time cham-
pion jockey. In those circumstances I could still go racing while
getting used to the idea of having let the genie out of the bottle.
In addition I thought announcing my decision in advance
might even be good for the sport. After Cheltenham and Aintree
there wouldn’t be an awful lot for racing people to talk about
or write about: the Flat season wouldn’t have got going and the
Grand National would be done and dusted. I was concerned that
when casting around for things to write about journalists and
columnists would notice it was my twentieth year as champion
jockey and one or two might start speculating about my future.
How long can he carry on? How many championships can he go
for? Might he retire? I mean no disrespect to any journalists or
broadcasters, I’ve always had a good relationship with them and
know they have a difficult job to do, but I didn’t want someone
with nothing else to write about filling some column inches with
random speculation and then, lo and behold, I pop up at Sandown
two weeks later and retire. It might look as if they’d suggested it,
they’d put the seeds into my mind and got themselves a scoop,
and I couldn’t have anyone left with the impression it wasn’t en-
tirely my decision. It had to be my decision alone and be seen to
be my decision alone, a positive and assertive act, one that would
be good for me and might get people interested in racing and
talking about the sport I love.

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 WINNER

It also struck me that if I did announce my exit in advance

then there was absolutely no way I could change my mind. I
couldn’t arrive at Sandown on the last day of the season intend-
ing to retire only to have a great day’s racing, get to my last ride
and think, you know what? I don’t really want to do this, let’s
give it another year and see how it goes. I knew that was a very
plausible scenario. As it happened when I got to Sandown that’s
exactly how I felt, but by then there was no going back.
At the other end of the line JP listened quietly and patiently
to all this, and when I’d talked myself out said he agreed with
everything he’d just heard. It would be good for me and the sport
to announce my retirement once I’d ridden my 200th winner of
the season, he said, adding that I should make sure I was com-
pletely happy with the decision because I was going to have to
live with it.
Once again, JP had said exactly what I needed to hear and the
biggest decision of my life was made. There was no going back.
The next step was actually to tell people, especially those who
mattered most. I’d kept my retirement cards so close to my chest
that I hadn’t even said anything to Chanelle. Given that telling
Dave Roberts of such a major decision wasn’t something I could
do over the phone I asked him to come over to the house for
dinner, when I would tell both him and Chanelle together.
It was a Monday evening in early February when we welcomed
Dave to the house. I’m sure both he and Chanelle had sensed
something was afoot: I must have seemed a little distracted to
my wife – even more than usual – and although Dave and I speak
every day we see each other only rarely, and even then it’s for a
round of golf or a meal at a restaurant somewhere.
The three of us had some dinner and when we’d finished

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 A.P. McCoy

eating both Dave and Chanelle looked at me expectantly. They

knew me too well to assume the evening was just a whim of
mine.
I took a deep breath.
‘Dave,’ I said, ‘the reason I’ve got you down here tonight is to
let you know before anyone else that I’m going to be retiring at
the end of the season.’
He ran his finger around the rim of his wine glass as I ex-
plained my reasoning. I don’t believe it came as a total shock – if
he’d been turning over the possibilities in his mind on his way to
the house, retirement was probably high on the list – and once
I’d put him in the picture he said straightaway that he fully sup-
ported my decision and understood my reasons perfectly.
‘J.P. McManus is the only person who knows anything about
this,’ I continued. ‘Even Chanelle is hearing it for the first time
here tonight. I wanted both of you to be the first to know offi-
cially that I’m retiring from racing.’
They reacted so warmly and with such approval that any
last nagging traces of doubt I might have retained disappeared
on the spot. I’m sure Chanelle’s overriding feeling was relief
as much as anything: mine was, after all, a job at which I was
literally pursued by an ambulance around my workplace, and it
wasn’t that long since she’d had to deal with the wild-eyed, 300
winners-obsessed, utterly irrational version of me determined
to ride horses whatever the physical risk to myself. Dave, mean-
while, was so kind and gracious. The positive nature of both
their reactions vindicated my decision completely.
Hence the reverberations from my bombshell dissipated
quicker than I might have expected and we were able to move
on to the practicalities, most notably whether I should make

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 WINNER

a public announcement in advance or wait until I’d ridden my

last race at Sandown on 25 April 2015. They both agreed that
the latter wouldn’t be right, either for me or the sport. Chanelle
made the point that there were people around the country who
would make a special effort to come and see my last few rides
and feel they were giving me an appropriate send-off. Dismount-
ing after the last race of the season, announcing my news and
then disappearing into the sunset would deprive them of that.
In addition the goodwill and publicity it would create would
unquestionably be beneficial to the sport as a whole. Yes, it was
definitely the right way to go about it.
Then it was just a question of timing the announcement. I
told them that I’d been mulling over whether to do it after I’d
ridden my 200th winner.
‘I don’t want people to think I’m retiring because things are
going badly, or I’m sensing the start of a decline,’ I said. ‘I want
to announce it on a high and I want it to come right out of the
blue, to be a surprise to people. I thought my two hundredth
winner might be the best way to achieve that.’
Dave and Chanelle, the most important people in my profes-
sional and personal lives, both thought this was a perfect idea.
Everything was settled, then, and it was only after Dave had gone
home and we’d gone up to bed that I realised what a tremendous
relief I felt having unburdened myself of something that had
nagged away at me for so long. I slept more soundly that night
than I had in a long time.

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