McCoy Thinking Of Retirement

Yes, it’s true, AP McCoy has hinted that he’s thinking of retirement which, although bad news for us fans, is probably great news for the rest of the jockeys who ever hoped to take the Champion Jump Jockey title which McCoy has held since 1996!

No need to fret though, it looks to be a way off yet as McCoy wants 397 more winners before calling it a day. Basically he’s looking for 3.391 winners, a target set so that he would pass the number of British jump winners Martin Pipe, for whom he rode for seven years, trained.

Speaking candidly to Mihir Bose of the London Evening Standard, McCoy does admit that “It’s quite a lot of winners for me to get past him and it was more said in jest. He keeps saying that, if I get anywhere close to it, he’s going to take his trainer’s licence back out. Hopefully, it will give him a few sleepless nights.”

He then admits he will quit when he loses the champion jockey’s crown, saying: “That’s me done because then you’re not as good as you once were.”

For all his achievements, the one he rates most highly is riding more winners than Sir Gordon Richards in one season, setting the new mark of 289 in 2002.

“Sir Gordon Richards was the most successful jockey – flat or jumps – there’s ever been, champion jockey for 26 years. He set a record of 269 winners in the season 55 years before I broke it. That was my greatest achievement.”