McCoy to finally win the Grand National at Aintree?

Features / Timeform / 30 March 2010 / Leave a comment

McCoy will be hoping that it's fifteenth time lucky in the Grand National at Aintree this year

"If I haven't won the National, it's always going to be a failure in my career." There aren't many targets to have eluded Tony McCoy, yet the millstone of not winning the Aintree showpiece continues to hang around his neck.

"In a career in which he’s both set and smashed records that are unlikely to ever be matched, including 289 winners in a year, more than 3,000 winners in total and fourteen straight jockeys’ titles, it says plenty about McCoy’s staggering determination that the absence of Aintree glory on his record still irks him so much."

Butler's Cabin's defeat in the 2009 renewal was McCoy's latest failure in his apparently never-ending pursuit of success in the world's most famous steeplechase, a run that started in 1995 when Martin Pipe's Chatam crashed out at the twelfth.

In a career in which he's both set and smashed records that are unlikely to ever be matched, including 289 winners in a year, more than 3,000 winners in total and fourteen straight jockeys' titles, it says plenty about McCoy's staggering determination that the absence of Aintree glory on his record still irks him so much. How much of that frustration is down to the annual National inquisition provided by so many pieces just like this, only McCoy himself can answer, though Aintree success would surely silence any remaining doubters as to the man's legend.

Three third places, on Blowing Wind (2001 and 2002) and Clan Royal (2006), are the best National finishes McCoy can boast from fourteen attempts, and the latter's luckless exit a year before his placing, when in front only to be brought to a standstill by a loose horse, must have had the rider thinking the Aintree Gods simply have something against him. Such an incident brings to mind the old adage that 'it's better to be lucky than good', and big-race success down the years in the Gold Cup (Mr Mulligan), Champion Hurdle (Make A Stand) and Champion Chase leave no doubt that McCoy is certainly the latter.

It's probably little consolation to McCoy that National success eluded so many leading riders before him, amongst them Peter Scudamore, John Francome and Stan Mellor. The failure of other sporting greats such as Ivan Lendl (Wimbledon), Stirling Moss (F1 Driver's World Championship) and Raymond Poulidor (Tour de France), to win the 'Blue Riband' event in their respective fields probably doesn't soften the blow much more, either, but winning is seemingly all that's mattered to McCoy ever since he first turned his hand to riding and the feeling is he'll go on until the Grand National is his.

So what's the chance of that happening this year? Once more, he'll have the call on JP McManus' four entries. With the Willie Mullins-trained Arbor Supreme [16.5] now set to be ridden by Paul Townend, McCoy will have to to choose from the Jonjo O'Neill pair Don't Push It [70.0] and Can't Buy Time [21.0], as well as Arthur Moore's King Johns Castle [70.0]. The second-named, who fell in the National last year, looks the most likely of that trio at this stage, though needless to say the situation is a fluid one.

And there's some solace for Mr McCoy as well, if any were needed, in the shape of Flat racing's figurehead Frankie Dettori, who took one more ride (fifteen) to break his hoodoo in the Epsom Derby. Winning outright clearly never moves too far from the forefront of McCoy's mind, but that's one dead-heat he'd surely accept with both hands.