AP: clearly the Real McCoy

16 February 2015 - 11:25 By Mike Moon
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Mike Moon.
Mike Moon.
Image: SUPPLIED

What makes someone successful? Seven habits? Self-belief? Entrepreneurial secrets? A tsunami of self-help books churns with these and a confusion of other theories. But few mention "fear", at least not in a positive sense.

That's why this caught my eye: "I've enjoyed riding, but every day the fear's been there that I'm not going to ride any more winners . the fear is what kept me awake at night and I don't think it will keep me awake any more."

The man uttering those words is the greatest jockey to have graced a racetrack. And arguably the bravest, toughest sportsman ever.

Irishman AP "Tony" McCoy announced his impending retirement this week, having sewn up his 20th successive British jumps racing champion jockey title. Amid all the fuss, AP revealed the wellspring of his phenomenal will to win: fear of failure.

What an interesting revelation in a world in which positivity, job satisfaction, teamwork, "passion" (shudder!), motherhood and apple pie are peddled as essentials for a winning career.

Of course, McCoy had other qualities helping him translate night-time terror into daytime glory. A body of high rubber content helped. Jumps racing is ridiculously dangerous and most riders have short careers marked by injury and pain.

McCoy has broken 29 bones in 23 years in the saddle - or rather out of it - in innumerable tumbles. He long ago lost count of concussions, torn muscles and bruises.

Then there's his bravery, ferocious determination and addiction to the buzz of winning. Yet it's possible all these things, in themselves, flow from that fear of failure.

Famously modest and approachable, McCoy, 40, has ridden more than 4300 winners - double the number of the next rider on the list. This season he broke his own record for fastest first 100 and thought he might even crack the "impossible" 300 for the season.

"Nothing is impossible," murmured one of the few people in the world able to credibly say such a thing.

As 300 beckoned, this happened: "I got injured one day at Worcester. I dislocated my collarbone, broke two ribs and punctured my lung. I went back to riding three days after that thinking I couldn't afford to have any time off .

"I got another fall and dislocated again . so I had to have three weeks off. Through those three weeks I was a bit broken mentally, to be honest, as I'd got to the point where I'd won the championship for coming up 20 years yet I genuinely believed I was getting better."

Fear, captain, but not as we know it. Certainly one senses a big dollop of self-belief in there, but it ain't your common "self-belief" fig-leaf for arrogance and pomposity.

If you think I exaggerate the Tony McCoy legend, hark at this from Mick Easterby, an 83-year-old Yorkshire trainer renowned for plain speaking: "No words for McCoy. You've seen it, no need to talk about it."

My words for it would be "thank you". Once, at Newton Abbot racecourse in deepest Devon, confused on my first visit to a jumps meeting, I opted to simply back AP in every race. He won five times that rainy day and paid for my entire holiday.

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