THE REAL McCOY

At the end of the year in which he rode his 4,000th winner, AP McCoy talks candidly about the thrill of winning and the fear of failure, the physical and emotional cost of becoming the champion of champion jockeys and why, when he saw Roy Keane on television, he thought he was looking in the mirror.

AP McCoy is carrying a little more weight than usual.

Accustomed to travelling light, he arrives down to the lobby of a Dublin airport hotel bearing a compact overnight bag, a bottle of water and a copy of the Racing Post. But on this Sunday morning, as he prepares to head to Navan for a day’s racing, he’s carefully holding up one conspicuous addition: the suit he’ll wear at tonight’s BBC Sports Personality Of The Year awards ceremony in Leeds.