If your back’s to the wall, you’d want AP in your corner

AP McCoy’s announcement that he would be retiring at the end of the season didn’t come as a surprise to me because we are good friends.

He said it to me a good while back that this would be his last year but then, it wasn’t the first time he said that either so while I believed him, I only half-believed him.

One thing you know for sure is that now he has made the decision, he won’t be doing a Fergie or a Jamie Spencer. I would be astounded if he was to do that. He’s never done anything in his life by half, so I can’t see him starting now.

He rode every horse with 100% conviction and every decision he made was the same. He doesn’t half-do anything.

He is a sports fanatic and has watched other sports people as their powers were waning and wonder why they didn’t get out when they were still the best. He wanted to get out at the very top and he is.

To be champion every year you are a professional is amazing in any walk of life, but for a jump jockey, it’s even more incredible. I have seen him break his sternum, make bits of his arm in Galway one year, breaking vertebrae, etc, etc.

There have been months within some of those 20 seasons when (through injury) he wasn’t able to ride but, when he’d return he’d start relentlessly churning out the winners again and be champion by a country mile.

I would consider myself a very good friend of his. I trust him. I would have asked him a lot of things over the years and he would have done the same to me. If your back was to the wall or you’d a big call to make, he’s the fella you’d want in your corner.

I can’t specifically remember when I met him first, but he was champion jockey by the time I started riding as a professional. I got to be friends with him through James Nash. When I started riding in England, Nash got me in to stay with him the very first night. That has been the routine for the 15 or so years since.

I could go through the summer for two months and not talk to him, but could pick up then on the conversation we left off on two months previously, like we had been talking earlier in the morning. He’s been an unbelievable friend to me. He always looked out for me.

We were rivals too. We liked getting one-up on each other. You never pulled up alongside him and smiled back at him after touching him off, but an hour later you’d say “Got ya there!”

This season, he’s 1-0 ahead because he edged me out by a neck at Doncaster two weeks ago. Jezki stepped into the last in the Irish Champion Hurdle so I didn’t get a chance to level the scores, but I want to get him before he retires.

I remember the first three or four times I got into a battle with him, I lost. He was older and stronger. I got stronger and cleverer, and got to know how he was riding. But a couple of them stick in my mind. I knew I was second best, but it drove me on. There were a couple of great days I nabbed him once or twice at Cheltenham, but I still remember the ones I lost to him. And he’ll remind me too.

He has been an unbelievable ambassador for racing. You never picked up a paper and saw McCoy being banned for anything only trying too hard. You never picked up the paper and saw him falling out of a nightclub.

People talked about his strength in a finish, his iron will, but tactically he is superb. He never stopped improving. You’d think you were getting close to him and he’d improve again.

Even that famous ride on Wichita Lineman in the William Hill Trophy at Cheltenham six years ago, he never got into full-drive mode until he was half-way up to the last. He was flapping and cajoling before that. Everyone talked about his strength but to me it was the pure timing of it. Tactically he ended up an amazing rider.

In those big races, when you were riding the favourite and he was riding the second favourite, you had to think long and hard about it because you didn’t know what he was going to do. So much sport is played between your ears. The older he got, the cleverer he got.

When I lost my spleen in 2008, I was in Cheltenham Hospital. Just around the time I passed out, AP happened to ring my wife, Gillian. He was on the way home at the time but when he spoke to her, he turned the car around and when I regained consciousness, he was at the edge of the bed.

Even last year in Cheltenham, when I got the fall on Gold Cup day. His son, Archie was in hospital after having heart surgery but when I woke up after surgery, he was sitting in my room along with my mum and dad — Gillian was at home, expecting Gemma, so it meant a lot. He had his own worries at the time. It’s the measure of the man.

When he broke his sternum and punctured his lung off Quantitativeasing two years ago, I was at the hospital with him as we had been going to go to Ayr that night, for the Scottish Champion Hurdle the next day. He was in absolute agony but he kept saying ‘I’m not too bad’. He couldn’t move on the bed!

The phone rang and it was his wife, Chanelle.

“Whatever you do” she pleaded with me, “don’t let him get out of the bed.”

“You’re alright” I laughed. “He can’t physically get out of it.”

But he was. “I’ll be alright. Just give me an hour,” he said.

I don’t know what he will do now but I hope he stays in racing.

He’ll miss it for a while but he’s done it all and I think he’ll be able to get on with his life. That’s the benefit of retiring on your own terms. That said, I don’t see him going back to college to study accountancy!

I’ll miss the challenge of riding against him. And I’ll definitely miss going into the Weight Room when it’s all over to talk to him. That’ll be the biggest loss to me.

But I’m lucky, we will always be close friends.

McCoy’s father proud of champion

Tony McCoy’s father Peadar has spoken of his pride after the champion jockey announced his intention to retire from the saddle at the end of this season.

The announcement that stunned racing came after McCoy had ridden his 200th winner of the season on Mr Mole in the Game Spirit Chase at Newbury on Saturday.

While glad his son is going out at the top, he is in the dark as to what the future holds for him

“I had no idea he was going to do that,” McCoy senior said. “I was pleased but in another way I wasn’t, I’m just hoping he stays straight for the rest of the season now. I’m very proud, everything he’s done has been above expectations, he couldn’t have done any better.

“The two Gold Cups at Cheltenham are the highlight for me because I wasn’t there when he won the National. I went the year after, but I wasn’t there the 14 years before.

“It’s not easy watching him, especially when he falls. As long as you see him get up it’s OK, but sometimes he gets up when he shouldn’t. It’s worked out well for him.”

He went on: “I never really saw it (determination) in him. It was Billy Rock who rang Jim Bolger and told him he’d be a champion, but he thought on the Flat. Jim’s has to be the best school in Ireland.

“I don’t know what he’ll do now, he could be like Richard Dunwoody and not go back to racing again. I don’t think he’ll train, even though he’s built a new yard.

“We’re all here today and we’re very proud. You couldn’t ask for a better career.”

His mother, Claire, said: “I thought maybe last year when he was 40 he might announce it at Sandown that it was his last year, but it didn’t happen.

“Twenty-five years is a long time. It wasn’t easy when he went (away from home) at the beginning. I don’t think now you could let someone 15 or 16 go away. I found it very difficult all those years ago. You couldn’t have written the script yesterday. And today has been absolutely unreal.”