7th March 2009 - MCCOY V WALSH AT CHELTENHAM - Brough Scott

MCCOY V WALSH AT CHELTENHAM

Thursday in Somerset, morning snow up above Stourhead, spring still waiting in the hedgerows, but McCoy and Walsh back in action at Wincanton. “A.P.” and “Ruby”, for us just part of the family, but next week we and the world need to realise what we are watching. For this is nothing less than the most sustained, top flight duel in the whole universe of sport.

Nothing else has anything to match it. The two best people to have ever played the game will be in against each other day after day, race after race, with food a scarcity and risks a plenty. Federer and Nadal only meet once at Wimbledon and they eat in the changeovers and feast at night. Woods and Harrington might conceivably go head to head for four days at The Open, but it’s only “bogeys” not big galloping brutes that lurk in the bunkers, and the two never actually, like Walsh and McCoy, share lifts and houses together throughout the year.

We all thought we had written ourselves out when A.P passed the 3,000 winner mark last month, although perhaps not the joker who has amended the McCoy Wikipedia entry to read “he stands 7’2 1/2” and has a minimum weight of around 17 st 8lbs yet lets neither affect his ability.” But walking in to Wincanton was to reflect the astonishing point that by some measurements 34 year old McCoy isn’t even the most successful jockey around.

For while Tony has clocked up 162 winners and £1.8 million during the 9 months of the shared Anglo/Irish season, Ruby’s 140 winners have reaped £2.5 million already. What’s more the records over the last five years show Walsh, with £16.8 million from 895 winners, way ahead of the £11.7 million from 914 winners of his senior rival. Add that Ruby has been leading rider at the Festival three times in the last five years, and that A.P.’s two titles were back in 1997 and 1998, and you are almost making a case that McCoy is gone at the game.

This did not seem to entirely convince Mr Walsh as he sat sipping coffee after the first. “Not at all,” he said, the young man’s smile lighting up the silver thatched head. “He’s amazing, not just in what he does in a race but how he thinks about it. We are just very different jockeys because we are very different shapes. One day last year I borrowed his DJ and while the trousers hardly covered my ankles, the jacket almost reached my knees. We are the same height but he is all torso, I am all leg. I once rode on his saddle and I could not lower the leathers anywhere near deep enough.”

In the race just past, Walsh had for long been at his serene best, coaxing the talented but wayward St Killans Run through his field with that flowing, deep-crouched style which the mind already pegs forward to images of Celestial Halo, Master Minded and Kauto Star. But St Killans Run downs tools spectacularly on the flat and left his rider chewing one of the most important of Cheltenham lessons.

“You have to approach this game with a bit of humility,” says Ruby, “because it is always ready to bite you in the arse.” He had just done one interview with Racing UK and another with The Guardian, but his eyes were alight as he talked of the Festival. “It’s the one time of year,” he says, “when you are having to push yourself for everything. Where there is absolutely no quarter asked nor given. It doesn’t matter if it is A.P. McCoy or anyone else, once the tapes go up I will cut their head off if I had to. But once it is over I will shake their hand. That’s how I was brought up. That is how sport should be.” In May Walsh will be 30, ten days after McCoy reaches his 35th birthday, and the sight of our 13 times champion standing tall and gaunt ready to weigh out at the scales recalled just how unrelenting is the treadmill he keeps turning. A.P’s 39 rides in the last fortnight have yielded 13 winners, 7 of them for Jonjo O’Neill, the six others from six different trainers. By contrast Ruby’s 11 winners from 36 rides have come from just two men, six from Paul Nicholls and five from Willie Mullins, the respective leading trainers in Britain and Ireland. The statistics confirm what the eye tells us day by day. McCoy may have got financial comfort from the McManus retainer, but it has not eased his appetite for other work.

In the fifth he was going to work for me. David Arbuthnot needed a hand in saddling his runner Sound Accord. With weights at 11 stone 4 there was not much saddle to tie on to the giant novice chaser’s back, and we marvelled at how so big a beast could be controlled and balanced with leathers that are so short. But the admiration in the paddock was not for the mechanics but for the mind.

McCoy had never sat on Sound Accord in his life, or indeed on the Venetia Williams trained favourite Quickbeam, but he was as familiar with them as if they were his own. “The favourite is not that good a jumper,” he said, his lean face set and his unblinking eyes narrowed in focus as if there were 30 runners not just three. “So I will take a lead for a few fences but I won’t allow him an easy time up front.”

Sound Accord proved a fine accomplice. After three parts of a circuit McCoy put him up alongside the smaller, prettier favourite. Very soon Quickbeam’s flaws began to show. As they came towards us McCoy was clamping his body down and pumping his partner into the fences with that one-two-three push rhythm that has become his trademark. Quickbeam’s confidence continued to wane.

Twice down the back straight Sound Accord launched himself up a whole stride early but that didn’t alarm his rider compared to what happened later. “You were standing by the second last,” he said after he had debriefed Arbuthnot about his charge’s future, “you didn’t see four out. I thought I had him sorted and I very much did not. Like many of my plans,” he added with a self mocking laugh, “it proved to be the wrong one. You can be sure there will be plenty like that next week.”

It’s a winning way of pointing out the challenge ahead when there will be 28 races won but the riding title can be taken by winning a mere three. “It’s Cheltenham,” says the tall figure who will be carrying a lot more than racing silks when he bends his body round the likes of Binocular, Exotic Dancer and Calgary Bay, “you have to take risks, horrifying risks sometimes. This is when you are going to have to ask horses up when you don’t think they can get there but they just might. It is not about me and Ruby, it is not about money. It is every man for himself but it is not about “doing” anyone. It is about winning at Cheltenham.”

What he and Ruby might have added but are far too modest to suggest, is that this and they bring us the ultimate absolute of sport.