Sir AP McCoy: ‘I had more failure than anyone else’

Former 20-time Champion Jockey Sir AP McCoy has told William Hill’s new podcast, Up Front with Simon Jordan, that he can understand why people don’t hold jockeys to the same level as other sportspeople.

Speaking on William Hill’s Up Front with Simon Jordan, a brand-new podcast hosted by the former Crystal Palace owner who speaks to sports stars and celebrities and challenges their opinions whilst scrutinising their careers, McCoy said: “I get that in terms of needing the animal or the car to be good at your sport, the question is whether other sportspeople deserve more credit than you do, and I think they probably do.

“The horse always deserves the credit no matter how good of a jockey you are. I’d like to say that I was lucky to have ridden more horses that were simply faster than everyone else’s horses and that it had nothing to do with my ability. I think, obviously you need the horse, but you need the jockey to be able to be able to make better, quicker decisions more often and make fewer mistakes. You need to be able to win more than anyone else to put yourself in the position for people to want you more than anyone else.

“I think a bad jockey can get a good horse beaten. I look at races and often think that the jockey made the difference because they have a better ability to read a situation quicker or make an instinctive manoeuvre quicker than others.

“I like to think that I got on horses that had other people had ridden lots of times before and never won on and I managed to get them to win because I was able to find ways of making them run faster. I won on lots of horses that previously had never won. People will say that I got lucky and rode them on a good day or when the race wasn’t as good and managed to win, but I rode horses that ran eight or 10 times without winning, and then I managed to get them to win four races in a row. I’d like to think I found a way of getting them to perform, similar to a football manager or a boxing coach.”

What makes a great jockey – I never wanted to be okay with not winning 

In light of the debate around jockeys as sportspeople, McCoy outlined the factors which he believes made him one of the greats of horse racing.

The Northern Irishman said: “For the 20 years of my life as a jockey I don’t think I was ever content, I was never satisfied, and I always wanted more. I went to a sports psychologist when I was 24 because I thought it might make me better, and no disrespect, but it didn’t make me better because I never wanted to be okay with not winning. I wanted to go to bed at night miserable when I was bad at what I was meant to be good at.

“What helped me a lot is I was good at being level when I won and when I lost and taking praise and criticism equally. But you have to appreciate and enjoy the big days like a Cheltenham Gold Cup or Grand National win, and I think there’s an egotistical part in every good sportsperson. Tiger Woods knows that even though now he’s 47, there’s going to be more people wanting to watch him than all the other golfers put together.

“I was always in the moment, but I enjoyed the torture of the build-up and the drive to get there. I was Champion Jockey for 20 years in a row, but I only got enjoyment out of being Champion Jockey for the two or three weeks before I held up the trophy because numerically no one could beat me, and I had three weeks of feeling like I was Champion Jockey. As soon I held up the trophy at Sandown and then put it back down, it was gone.

“I wanted to be different. When I went into the jockeys’ changing room I looked around and, not in an arrogant way, I want to be better than everyone in here. If you’re at Crystal Palace as a footballer, you should be walking into the changing room thinking I want everyone to think I’m the best. I had people saying to me ‘why are you traveling four hours to Sedgefield just to ride in one race?’, and I’m thinking, ‘it’s because I want to and if you want to beat me, you’re going to have to do it as well.’”

Dealing with failure – I had more failure than anyone else

In a continuation of the conversation on what makes a great sportsperson, McCoy discussed with Jordon on how he dealt with failure, put it into perspective, and used it to his advantage throughout a glittering career which saw him ride over 4,000 winners.

“I had more failure than anyone else,” McCoy said, “The day I retired there were headlines on how great I was and my 4,357 winners and Richard Johnson, runner up to me as the Champion Jockey for 16 years, looked at me and said, ‘not one person has mentioned the 14,000 losers you rode, you’re actually the losing-most jockey of all time’. You do lose more than you win but I had a thing that I had to make sure I won more than everyone else, and I used myself as my benchmark and if I could beat what I had done previously then I would be hard to beat.

“I used to come home and watch replays. I spent more time watching the races that I didn’t win, trying to work out why I didn’t. I rode for a man called Martin Pipe, who was the most successful Jump trainer ever, and I used to write reports about his horses every night and other horses that weren’t even his because I thought I could learn from it and look back at it. I know that those are things that made me better.”