AP McCoy riding to a 300-win season after 89th victory of year
Published:Every so often, a sportsperson will come along whose talent transcends that of the rest of his or her field. When that happens, sometimes battling the history books, as well as their competitors, becomes a real source of motivation.
In jumps racing, AP McCoy is one such specimen. Having become the only jumps jockey to record 3,000 career winners in 2009, the Northern Irishman spent the next five years chasing the record held by Martin Pipe, his one-time trainer.
In catching, then surpassing, his former boss with a two-win outing at Market Rasen in July earlier this year, which took his tally to 4,192, there remains just one record for the man known simply as Champ to chase.
No jockey has ever managed to record 300 winners in a single National Hunt season, with McCoy’s 2001/02 effort of 289 the current benchmark.
Having registered his quickest ever first 50 victories of the season this year though, the 40-year-old perma-Champion-Jockey is on course to make history for the umpteenth time in his distinguished career.
In fact, the prospect of McCoy recording a triple-century season is so palpable that Ladbrokes have opened the book on whether he can achieve it.
It’s 4/1 the two-time Cheltenham Gold Cup winner records 300 winners or more this season and after claiming his 89th win of the campaign aboard 6/4-shot Dorry K at Market Rasen on Sunday, he remains on course to do so.
McCoy is streets ahead of Tom Scudamore in the 2014/15 Champion Jockey race and currently boasts a phenomenal strike rate of 30 per cent for the campaign.
With all of the big meetings still ahead of him, McCoy must fancy his chances of having the first ever 300-win season, so long as injury doesn’t intervene.
Should he manage it, the 50/1 on him winning the Sports Personality of the Year award will look a wise investment.
All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.
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