FOUR THOUSAND AND ALL THAT…

The cynical might say it is only a number. Four thousand: three thousand, what’s the difference? Frankly for a National Hunt jockey, either figure is phenomenal. Considering he has already smashed six previous riding records, some might say he has little left to prove.

First to go was the record of National Hunt winners for a season (253), followed by the fastest 100-winners (admittedly assisted by an enhanced fixture list). Next to succumb to the McCoy magic was the long-held record established by Sir Gordon Richards in 1947 of the highest number of winners in any one season. McCoy scuttled Richards’ record by a greedy twenty when registering 289 winners in 2002.

Next for the torpedo was Richard Dunwoody’s tally when McCoy became the winning-most jump jockey of all time. Then, not content with beating previous records, he set about singularly busting down the doors leading to his own. He became the first jump jockey to ride 2,500 winners back in 2006 then rode his 3,000th winner in February 2009.

Already in a class of his own as far as targets were concerned, McCoy set about winning everything from selling hurdles to the Grand National, the Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle. Focusing on race-riding to the point of it being an obsession, Tony McCoy, who has now been champion jockey for eighteen consecutive seasons (another record), is a winner-riding machine. If not physically then certainly mentally constructed for the competitiveness of horseracing, there was only ever one purpose in the mind of Tony McCoy.

At thirty-nine years of age, he is getting on for a jump jockey. However, considering his achievements, you could still be forgiven for thinking he is older. Maybe he is; maybe he is on his second or third incarnation. Maybe in an earlier form he learned his trade from a chariot’s platform in Greece’s Hippodrome or in the Roman Circus. With weight not an issue in those former days, his face would not have had that gaunt pinched just-sucked-something sharp look it has now.

Tony McCoy is not everyone’s cup of lemon tea, although most punters love him, except perhaps those that bet against him and then have to witness an in-flight McCoy in a driving finish. True, Ruby is the scalpel to McCoy’s knife; both may be of equal ability, it is just that McCoy gives the impression of going to bed at night with a racecourse commentary running through his brain, whilst adrenalin replaces blood.

Out of the saddle, he can appear sullen, detached and haunted by his own sport and the pressures he heaps upon himself. In the saddle, ruthless in a finish, he can pick a horse up from the floor and lunge late to snatch a prize that rightfully belongs to someone else.

Time and again we have seen it (Synchronised in the 2012 Cheltenham Gold Cup); but McCoy is also a master out in the country, often nursing tentative jumpers over fences whilst they gather confidence, before the galvanised assault down the straight.

When McCoy is in the saddle anything is possible. That is what punters love – the money is never done-in until the race is complete. Preoccupied by an unquenchable thirst for winners – forget the great Good Friday shall-we-shan’t-we race debate – McCoy would ride for expenses at Hexham on Christmas Day. Some might label him mad – a one-dimensional one-trick pony only capable of functioning in the long shadows of winter beneath an iron sky: a man that needs the challenge presented by eight flights or twelve fences.

What he got at Towcester a little after 3pm on Thursday November 7th was two miles and five furlongs aboard hurdling debutant Mountain Tunes – the horse widely expected to supply a landmark four-thousandth success.

Racing is no respecter of convention or celebration. If it can sabotage the longed-for or the expected, rip up the script or rain on a parade, it will. It tried its hardest here but failed.

McCoy proved bigger than the scythe-carrying horseman. Wearing JP McManus’s waspish silks, McCoy, in front of his mentor and principal owner, his family, and urged on by well-wishers throughout the land, rode one of his most inspired finishes – one worthy of the occasion.

Only fifth turning for home, it seemed as if all the expectation was about to become thwarted. For this was meant to be the golden day – a private one for those within the circle. As with all horse races, the pre-show prices became irrelevant in running. All those with itchy fingers on their waiting machines could see was the lay button.

Pushed along, then clumsy at the second-last, Mountain Tunes was third and apparently labouring. Surely the dream would have to wait – it would be a humble affair at Southwell, or an event when our backs were partially turned. But wait … McCoy at his most determined … a horse in on the act, digging deep into its own box of tricks and conjuring a dash of magic dust. A tired leader; one more push from the last; a near collision with Panama Petrus in mid-air then a second wind; reserves from the depths – enough to pass the spoiler’s last chance, Kris Spin, and what was 3,999 is now 4,000.

Tony McCoy passes another milestone. The face – a mask of stone – cracks ever so slightly as it dawns. McCoy has cheated the gods yet again. The crowd erupts, the jockey responds to the claps on the back, the excitement from the stands. For a moment he is mortal in victory. It is only a brief moment. Already he is explaining that last flight collision with Aidan Coleman, steadying his mount, preparing for the ride back.

We can only watch and admire. Who is mad now? Not the man with the black-and-white sports gloves (I have an identical pair, there the similarity with the great man ends); no, not the man so-often decried for whatever reason – as victims of such elevated positions are – now so irrefutably, so incontrovertibly the master of all he surveys. This was the day all concerned will remember (paradoxically possibly McCoy least of all) long into the autumn of old-age.

Just one more day at the office for Tony McCoy: another record smashed (how many is it now?), another day’s work achieved, all this and Southwell tomorrow…