AP McCoy wins Hennessy Gold Cup a day after announcing his retirement

Leopardstown racecourse presented Tony McCoy with a crystal bowl here on Sundayto mark his many achievements in 20 record-breaking seasons as National Hunt’s champion jockey, no doubt the first of many mementos he will receive over the next couple of months as he rides towards retirement. But McCoy left with much more besides, having won the Hennessy Gold Cup, Ireland’s most prestigious chase, for the first time while raising the realistic possibility that he will bring down the curtain on his Cheltenham career by riding a third Gold Cup winner next month.

Sundaywas not quite a homecoming for McCoy. He was born across the border in County Antrim and has been based in Great Britain for two decades and so is not quite a native son at Leopardstown. Even after Sunday’two wins here only 142 of his extraordinary career total of 4,315 National Hunt winners have come on an Irish track.

But there could be no doubt about the heartfelt warmth in the acclaim for McCoy as he returned after his victory on Carlingford Lough, nor the depth of the respect among spectators packed a dozen deep along the rails in a country with a real passion for National Hunt racing. The same will be true of every racecourse crowd as McCoy makes his way round the circuit in the weeks to come, whether he rewards them with a winner or not.

There were, of course, three cheers as McCoy and Carlingford Lough walked into the winner’s enclosure, having beaten Foxrock and Lord Windermere, last year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, by three-quarters of a length and eight. But there was the silence of a church shortly afterwards as McCoy’s interview with RTE television was patched into the PA and everyone strained to hear the retiring champion speak.

“Gold Cup day is probably the most important day of the whole jumping year,” McCoy said, “and on today’s performance he’s got a live chance. He feels in great shape and we’d hope that he’ll go there with every chance.

“People in racing have been amazing all through my career and I’ve been very lucky to have done the job that I’ve done. My wife said yesterday that I was probably just born lucky the way it happened, that I rode my 200th winner on Mr Mole on Channel 4 and was able to announce my retirement, and then fate has it that I was lucky enough to win the Hennessy.

“I was well aware that I couldn’t keep going forever. No matter how long I kept riding for, there was always going to be a time when I was leaving the possibility of riding good horses in good races behind. I was always wanting to go out while I was riding reasonably well and champion jockey, and I wanted it to be on my terms. I wanted people to ask me why I was retiring and not why I wasn’t retiring. That’s just the way I’ve always been.”

In theory, at least insofar as he has had a chance to work it out, McCoy’s last day as a professional jockey will be 25 April, when British racing stages its seasonal finale at Sandown Park. Fans who want to applaud McCoy in person might be advised to make it sooner and not later, however, because on a day like Sunday it was possible to imagine him going out a little earlier than planned.

McCoy’s face, thin and lean as always thanks to years of self-denial to keep his weight low, was a single broad smile from the instant he pulled up Carlingford Lough until he left the podium after the final trophy presentation. Even after 4,314 previous trips to the winner’s enclosure it was clear that a Grade One winner still fires McCoy like nothing else. He is certain to leave race-riding as an undefeated champion, with 20 straight titles to his name, and would surely like to go out on a winner too, better yet in a major event. Were he to win the Gold Cup or even – whisper it – the Grand National …

The bookmakers have already started to steel themselves for that possibility. No horse in a modern Grand National should ever be much shorter than 10-1 in the betting but whatever McCoy rides at Aintree in early April – assuming of course that he rides in the race at all – seems certain to start as one of the shortest-priced favourites for years.

Then again it is possible, too, that the right moment will arrive unexpectedly, a little like the victory of Carlingford Lough, the 4-1 third-favourite, on Sunday. The horse everyone expected to give McCoy a winner on the card was Alvisio Ville in the Grade One Deloitte Novice Hurdle but he was no match for Nichols Canyon, a stablemate at the Willie Mullins yard, who won under Ruby Walsh and could now go to either the Supreme Novice Hurdle or the Neptune Novice Hurdle at Cheltenham.

Mullins had a one-two in the Grade One Spring Juvenile Hurdle and both Petite Parisienne, the winner, and Kalkir, who was one and three quarter lengths away after starting the 5-4 favourite, will now head to the Triumph Hurdle. Mullins’ Valseur Lido could finish only second in the Grade One Flogas Novice Chase, however, as Noel Meade’s Apache Stronghold held on by half a length.

Yet even on a day with four Grade One events and the scent of Cheltenham firmly in the air, the afternoon was all about one man. It will be much the same throughout his farewell tour round many of the tracks where he compiled his unassailable record of winners. The only question is whether he will stop at a winner, and if so, where?