McCoy celebrating 'unbelievable' Sports Personality prize
Jockey Tony McCoy has been crowned BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
The 15-times champion became the first person in racing to gain the nation’s vote at the climax of the annual review of the sporting year, which took place on Sunday evening at Birmingham’s LG Arena.
Darts legend Phil Taylor finished runner-up in the prestigious awards ceremony, while heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis was third.
McCoy secured 293,152 votes, 41% of the overall total of 698,242, and his nearest rival Taylor polled 72,095.
McCoy said: “This is an unbelievable feeling to be standing in front of so many amazing sports people – so many people who I look up to. To win this award is very surreal.
“I work in a wonderful sport of horse-racing and I’d like to thank every one of those (people) because I know that most of the (racing) public spent most of the night voting for me.
“When I started off as a jockey I wanted to be champion jockey in my mind, and I have been lucky enough to be champion jockey for 15 years.
“But the Grand National is the biggest horse race in the world and everyone knows I had won all the other races and to finally achieve that – it was just an unbelievable day.”
McCoy has ridden more than 3,000 winners and has claimed just about every big race in the National Hunt calendar, including the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle and King George VI Chase.
However, it was his first victory in the John Smith’s Grand National on the Jonjo O’Neill-trained Don’t Push It, owned by JP McManus, in April that finally endeared him to the wider public.
It was a triumph that saw McCoy, 36, allow his emotionless guise to slip following so many agonising failures in the world’s most famous horse race at Aintree in April.
He waved his whip to the crowd in sheer delight at the relief of ending his Grand National hoodoo.
Success in the country’s premier award will be seen by the racing industry as the ultimate recognition for a career that has seen McCoy rewrite the record books time and again.
Despite breaking just about every bone in his body, some more than once, he has dominated the sport ever since he became champion jockey for the first time in the 1995-96 season.
Not only is he by far the winning-most jockey in jumps history, he even overcame the legendary Gordon Richards’ all-time record total of 269 winners in a season in 2002.
McCoy added: “Without Jonjo O’Neill I wouldn’t be standing here because I definitely wouldn’t have won the Grand National without him.
“To win it for JP and Norah McManus was an unbelievable feeling because I knew they wanted to win it as much as I did.
“To my wife, Chanelle, and my mother and father, my brothers and sisters, all the other lads in the weighing room who I work with every day, and I know I drive mad, thanks to them.
“Even more amazing than winning this trophy is my daughter, Eve, who is three. I know she’s going to be watching and I just want to say how amazing she is.”
