In a game packed to the gills with hard men and women, 17-times champion jockey AP McCoy might be the hardest of all.
You only have to look back at Cheltenham this year to see just how dangerous the game of National Hunt racing is. Davy Russell suffered a spontaneous collapsed lung after an old injury was aggravated by a fall and he spent a number of nights in hospital recovering.
Much more seriously JT McNamara, an amateur rider from Limerick, suffered a serious neck injury and at the time of writing remained in an induced coma in a Bristol hospital after an operation.
As occupations go, being a jumps jockey is not only hugely demanding physically, but you are never any more than a second or two away from a very serious injury. In over 20 years in the sport now, AP McCoy has suffered more than most in that respect.
Before he ever rode in a National Hunt race he broke his leg on the gallops of Enda Bolger and his pro career is a catalogue of pretty much every injury imaginable.
Put ‘Tony McCoy’ and ‘injuries’ into Google and you get 279,000 responses. Back in 20210 he told a newspaper the longest he has ever gone without injury since becoming a jockey was two-and-a-half months and he has broken both shoulder blades and collar bones, wrist, ankle and cheek bones. He has also lost all his teeth.
The worst was probably a back injury, sustained in January 2008, which saw both sides of his T12 vertebrae fractured, while also shattering his T9 and T10 for good measure. Within seven weeks he was back riding and he had his first winner a week later.
It is that desire to literally get back on the horse, and get the next winner, that makes McCoy a phenomenon. He’s been Champion Jockey 17 times, every year since he turned pro. That’s the sort of dominance that makes even Phil Taylor look like an underachiever.
In the process of winning all those titles the Antrim man has ridden over 3,500 winners, and he is miles ahead in the race to win yet another Champion Jockey crown this year.
Every big race in the game has been won by the 38-year-old. The big space on his CV was the Grand National but he filled that Don’t Push It in 2010, a win that meant he also claimed the BBC Sports Personality of the Year prize, a huge acknowledgement of his place in the sporting world.
But it is away from Aintree, Cheltenham and all the other glamour races that McCoy really does his stuff. He pushes home winners in places like Fontwell, Wincanton and Huntingdon, giving the same effort as he would up Prestbury Park hill.
It is that drive, that lust for success, that makes him the greatest jump jockey we have ever seen, and may ever see.
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