A high quality A2 signature art print Individually numbered. By the artist Paul Skellett.
Professionally mounted and framed in a black wood frame with glass insert.
About
“Champ” - that is what his friends and rivals call the racing legend AP McCoy and now he has retired after an extraordinary career.
On bleak winter days at lesser-known sporting venues like Stratford and Newton Abbot, a riding phenomenon has unfolded over the last 23 years. Cold, sore, tired and underweight, he has set new landmarks as the mud flies in his face, watched by a hardy band of supporters.
The 20-time champion jockey is calling time on a record-breaking career after amassing 4,358 racing winners, including his last one on Gannicus which was on the flat at Doncaster, in the Leger Legends Charity Race, under rules. He was Conditional Champion in 1991 and then went onto to record 20 consecutive Champion jockey titles, every season since! Like all his colleagues, the Ulsterman risked his life every day in an arena where there are only a few blank days in the calendar, and an ambulance followed every race. He has fallen an estimated 1,000 times from horses weighing half a tonne, travelling at speeds of up to 30mph.
Teetotal McCoy's toll of injuries is sobering. He's broken both collarbones, shoulder blades, his lower and middle vertebrae, ribs, cheekbones, a leg, ankle, arm and wrist. He has punctured his lungs, chipped teeth and dislocated his thumb. However, each time he gets up again, driven by his unquenchable thirst for winners and to set landmarks that he will never see beaten. "He really is an iron man," said Martin Pipe, the retired 15-times champion trainer who employed him as stable jockey for nearly a decade. "I remember one race early on where the horse slipped up on the bend at Chepstow. AP fell and the whole field galloped over him; he really got flattened. I was in the stands and ran down to see where they might have carried him off on the stretcher, and thought through who was going to ride later. We thought our horse Or Royal was a good thing later in the day but lo and behold, two races later, out came AP to ride him and duly won on it." McCoy's toll of injuries Racing is a numbers game - odds, fractions, lengths, furlongs. AP has redefined the mathematics, from novice hurdles at Hexham to the Grand National.
When Stan Mellor rode his 1,000th winner over jumps in 1971, racing fans thought it might never be passed. Yet Mellor's record was subsequently broken by John Francome (1,138 wins), Peter Scudamore (1,678) and Richard Dunwoody (1,699). AP idolised Dunwoody as a child, but was just 28 when he passed his tally, seven years younger than his fellow Northern Irishman whose career was ended by injury at the age of 35. That was in 2002, the year he achieved perhaps his most staggering achievement - breaking the all-time record set by Sir Gordon Richards by racking up 289 victories in one season. In that season he rode 189 winners just for Pipe. When Dunwoody won his last title in 1995, his tally for all trainers was 160. Sir Gordon was champion jockey 26 years running, and his record stood for 55 years. He rode on the flat, whereas McCoy has stretched his body and the pain barrier to achieve more success. Winners are what drove him, and fear - the fear of not being champion or losing his records. "He rode 1,154 winners for me alone, which is amazing, over 25% of his winners," added Pipe.
