AP McCoy reaches fastest ever century of winners

I have never read such a load of bollocks in my life! There has never been another jockey as gifted and physically strong as AP. There are others who sit as well on a horse, there are those with better records at Cheltenham blah blah but on a day in day out basis he simply has no peer. The hardest working and toughest jockey I have ever known. If you really wanted a horse to win you would want him on it and more than that if you really wanted to know what your nag is capable of you would have him on it! Above all else the man is the most humble recipient of every accolade you ever wish to find.
What cant speak cant lie and the record books show that he has no equal...!

 

One other thing that I recall from AP's book was his desire to push the boundaries of what's possible. He recalled Dettori's amazing achievement of going through the card at Ascot but dismissed it as even more difficult over obstacles. However he mentioned it more than once and it did make me wonder whether he would attempt to pull it off at some stage. Well today at Worcester he has rides in all 7 races, 3 odds on and nothing bigger than 11/4. The acca pays just shy of 700/1. Just saying!

 

I have told his work to cancel fish Friday's. That will make him realise the error of his ways.

 

Does it really, Stick?!? Are you sure, old boy?!?

I've dusted off my record books and they show that McCoy has won an awful lot of sellers and class 4 and 5 heats but his record in the biggest of the big races is way, way behind that of Ruby and Barry. He's won 3 Champion Hurdles, 2 CGC's, 1 King George, 1 Champion Chase, 1 Grand National and no World Hurdles or Hennessy Gold Cup's. 8 wins in these races is highly respectable and very good but such a level of achievement does not merit all this nonsense produced in the media about him being a million miles in front of every other saddle monkey and that 'we will never see another one like him'. In comparison, incidentally, in the same 7 races the Ruby boy has 20 wins and old boy Gerraghty 16!

On the subject of Binocular when he went to Ireland in Feb ’10 Mr Henderson was constantly kept up to date with his condition and was supervising his recovery from afar – the old boy couldn’t even ‘go to the bathroom’ without the great man’s approval. When the shoots of recovery began to be displayed in the horse he was immediately dispatched back to Seven Barrows where Mr Henderson’s ‘magic hands’ worked a miracle to produce one of the training performances of our age. People if you want a legend in our sport look no further than Mr Henderson. He’s horse racing’s shining star, it most immediately recognisable figure and a total genius.

Binocular, of course, has one Champion Hurdle to his name but in my view is so unlucky not to have 4. Jockey error cost him big time in ’09 and ’12 whilst he was robbed of running in ’11 due to those ‘unfortunate circumstances’ when favourite. Like his trainer though Binocular was a true great.

 

Why do you keep banging on about the big races and the Festival. Thats one week of the year and you like so many other National Hunt followers are way over obsessed about it.
The thousands of us that follow racing on a daily basis without hiding behind a no bet banner see the truth on a daily basis. The truth being that AP McCoy is the best we have ever seen, day in day out. No disrespect to Ruby and co but I expect Rupert himself would even agree!

 

Dear Mr Henderson gets rubbed out on a drug charge. A.P had a share in a drugged greyhound.

 

Have to say I'm loving this thread, especially Mr Chuckles' contributions, quite excellent!

This made me smile the widest! If you say if right Barney old chap, you'd actually say he's lucky to have won 1, saying that 2010 was the year injury prevented the great Hurricane Fly travelling over. As you'll know too well the score between those 2 rivals is Fly 5 Binocular 0!!!

The only reason AP's Festival record ain't a patch on Ruby is AP wasn't stable jock to Britain and Ireland's top 2 yards this last 7 or so years the way Ruby has been.

Without digressing from the thread too much, stick makes the point that the NH fraternity is obsessed with Cheltenham and that's certainly true. Ted Walsh said many years ago it's becoming a monster, eating everything around it and that definitely holds true. Anyway, that's another story for another day.

It's AP's dedication that sets him above the rest, not necessarily his horsemanship skills.

 

Well at least no-one can argue with that.

 

I like it when a poster rams home a point with statistics, then in the next breath, supports another point of view with assumptions.

 

Stick, in today’s ‘Weekender’ Tom Segal is writing about Ruby being the greatest ever jumps jockey. Different people have different opinions. I don’t strongly dislike McCoy at all. What really annoys me, and this arguably is not his fault, is the ridiculous myth perpetuated by so many that he is miles better than the rest of the NH saddle monkeys. He blatantly is not. In my view he’s a very good rider amongst plenty of similarly skilled pilots.

Beefy, since 1997 McCoy has had 2 of the biggest ever jobs in NH history (stable jockey/ retained rider, call it what you want, to Martin Pipe and then JP McManus). Given the ammunition that those two have provided him with over the years I really don’t buy into this he’s not had very good horses to steer line. Meanwhile, surely Hurricane Fly's win in 2011 should be accompanied in the aforementioned 'record books' by an asterisk denoting the fact that he won the race but only because of Binocular's harsh exclusion. In fact I always answer 'one and a half' when asked 'how many Champion Hurdles has Hurricane Fly won?'

I do agree that these days the NH season is becoming more and more about Cheltenham to the exclusion of almost everything else. There was a very good article recently about how the race that used to be called the ‘Racing Post Handicap Chase’, run a couple of weeks before the Festival, these days gets very a very limited field in terms of numbers and quality. This is despite the fact that it is worth more money than any handicap at the Festival. These races in contrast attract quality runners and are over subscribed many times over.

 

I expect there is a fair amount of tongue in cheek about this comment but I'm happy to play along. What was the explanation behind the 'great' Binocular's thrashing in the the Rabobank Champion Hurdle in May 2011. I was on course that day and the Fly absolutely destroyed him by the easiest 9 lengths you'll ever see. Binocular even had to give way to the thoroughly admirable but not great Thousand Stars too.

 

Barney, you have to admit that AP is the one jockey that you see regularly getting a horse to win when the horse has looked beaten in the race. You only have to look at that great ride on old Wichita Lineman to see the point. He might not be the most stylish, and he does get it wrong on occasions, but he is consistently brilliant at getting horses to win their races. No one can stand up to his consistency in that regard. Be it a seller at Towcester or a Grade 1 at Cheltenham.

 

AP has been magnificent today on the first two rides. Unbelievably committed. Richard Johnson jumped on his horses neck to keep him down once it took a very heavy fall in the first.

Just goes to show how top jockeys are invaluable be it in defeat and equally to trust them to look after the horses they're riding if it goes wrong.

 

I remember (just about!) Jonjo doing the same to Alverton after the crashed out at Beechers second time around in the GN.

Sad day that was.

 

Another four timer for the Champ out of a very moderate book of rides tonight..most of them no hopers if we are being honest.

I wonder what those rotters at Chuckle Towers made of that!

 

Dex, did the steward forget to put the tonic in your late night GnT?!? ‘No hopers’?!? 3 out of his 4 winners were odds-on!

 

I was wondering last night, how many points does AP knock off a horses odds. Imagine you had a horse that in all reality was a 33/1 shot, if AP was on board what odds do you think the bookies would open up at?

 

Good question. It depends where the horse is running. If its at a gaff track like Plumpton (cough) then probably a lot shorter than he should be, but if its a big race at a big course then I don't think it will make much difference.

 

A mundane Thursday afternoon at soggy Plumpton