McCoy not ready to push it just yet
Backers like to follow trends. When assessing a race they will review those factors that have contributed to previous success as a route to future gain.
They will have pored over endless statistics relating to such clues to find the winner of the John Smith’s Grand National at Aintree on Saturday. And then there is the anomaly that is Tony McCoy.
Fourteen times he has ridden more winners than any other jump jockey in the season and each year he has got to the starting tape of the Grand National – and failed to win. He has three third places but the one that really got away was Clan Royal in 2005.
It was a day that McCoy probably still thinks about and, given his self-critical nature, has yet to file under “what might have been”. Clan Royal had been a slightly unlucky runner-up the previous year and the early signs this time had been far from propitious.
The breast girth broke early and that cause the saddle to slip, not that it was easily noticeable from McCoy’s posture as he clamped himself to the saddle. Clan Royal was pulling hard but he was also starting to pull clear on the run to Becher’s Brook on the second circuit. In fact he was six lengths clear approaching the fence that often represents the last major hazard to a horse’s chances.
Except that Clan Royal never made it as far as the fence. Loose horses are the unguided missiles that can shoot down hopes and it was one of those that brought Clan Royal to a standstill. McCoy can have a mournful edge to his voice at times and his words on the long trudge back to the weighing room came draped in funeral black. “He was always jumping well and travelling well but when we were going to Becher’s for the second time I could see the loose horses in front of me,” he said.
“They seemed to be going one way and then the other but basically to the right, so I went to the left to try to avoid them and then they turned left and cut right across me.”
To follow McCoy in the Grand National appears to cut across all logic except that this man knows more about winning races than any jump jockey in history and most of the Flat ones come to that. Thus his choice of ride in the race is greeted with more feverous anticipation than when Gordon Brown decides to announce the date of the general election – and with far more people trying to second-guess the man.
McCoy had the choice of four runners owned by JP McManus, by whom McCoy is retained; Arbor Supreme, Can´t Buy Time, Don´t Push It and King Johns Castle. The first three of those have been supported in the market, in that order, during the last seven days based on little more than the rumour that each has been McCoy’s intended mount, which may still decided as much by the state of the ground at Aintree.
The man himself did nothing to help the speculation when, in his column in the Daily Telegraph, he said: “There's no pressure to make a final decision until nearer the time, but having originally been pencilled in for Can't Buy Time, I now find myself leaning towards Don't Push It.
“You can forgive Can't Buy Time his run in the race last year - he eventually fell at the 18th - because he went there on the back of a hard race in the four-mile chase at Cheltenham, but there is a slight question mark about his stamina and he definitely wouldn't want the ground too soft.
“To my mind, Don't Push It has a bit of class and ability, and he'd be fine on that ground. That is my thinking at the moment, and I reserve the right to change my mind several more times.”
The truth may that McCoy’s choices do not include a horse in the right form to win the race.
He has gone on record as that that "if I haven't won the National, it's always going to be a failure in my career.” By comparison Sam Twiston-Davies has had more success than jockeys twice his age. The 17-year-old son of trainer Nigel Twiston-Davies won the Foxhunters' Chase on Baby Run at the Cheltenham Festival last month and now gets a ride in the National for his father on Hello Bud, winner of last year's Scottish National.
The Grand National is restricted to jockeys who have had at least 15 winners, one more than Twiston-Davies has managed in his short career so far. The rule was brought in to prevent those hapless amateurs who often took part in the race and represented a clear danger both to themselves and others in the race.
There has always been a get-out clause in the rule and British Horseracing Authority has used its discretion in light of the clear ability that the tyro jockey has already shown. When he rides Hello Bud, Twiston-Davies may find the ground no worse than good to soft if the course’s current weather prediction holds true.
However, the going at Fairyhouse today for the Powers Whiskey Irish Grand National is heavy. The 139th running of Ireland's richest chase has drawn a field of 30 runners, which mixed with the ground conditions, a distance of three miles and five furlongs and 22 fences provides all the ingredients for a thorough stamina test.
In the last 10 years only one horse has carried more than 11st to win.
That could be a trend worth following and Saddlers Storm has just 10st 1lb.
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