Jef­frey Ross

An­tho­ny 'AP' Mc­Coy re­tires to­day.

All good things come to an end but Mc­Coy has sur­vived twen­ty-one years as a a pro­fes­sion­al NH jock­ey, at the high­est lev­el, which is tes­ta­ment to his ded­i­ca­tion, con­sis­ten­cy and to­tal ap­pli­ca­tion-'punter's pal' with­out doubt.

Tony won the 1993/94 con­di­tion­al jock­eys' cham­pi­onship and then land­ed the cham­pi­onship suc­ces­sive­ly, for 20 years, ab­solute­ly in­cred­i­ble, even to write it!

This as­ton­ish­ing ca­reer reach­es fi­nal­i­ty at Sandown Park, last fix­ture of the cur­rent jump­ing sea­son, and Mc­Coy will be giv­en all kinds of pre­sen­ta­tions; the meet­ing has been 'sold out' for a week.

Last week­end a well-known jour­nal­ist was search­ing for a fit­ting ad­jec­tive, no word en­cap­su­lates and de­scribes his su­pe­ri­or­i­ty bet­ter than the ul­ti­mate to oft used word, bril­liant.

On­ly oth­ers de­serv­ing to be de­scribed thus, in my book, were Sir Garfield Sobers and Muhammed Ali, in their prime.

In every as­pect Mc­Coy has been a top class hu­man be­ing; his last month in an am­bas­sado­r­i­al role since an­nounc­ing to C4 in­ter­view­er, Rishi Per­sad, that "this will be my last sea­son...!" Tony has shown the pa­tience of Her Majesty, The Queen, diplo­ma­cy and com­pas­sion for the thou­sands who de­ter­mined to give this phe­nom­e­non a de­served send-off; they will nev­er for­get his charm and un­der­stand­ing as he signed hun­dreds of au­to­graphs and stood for count­less 'self­ies!'

A sell-out crowd will be sin­cere­ly hop­ing Mc­Coy rides a win­ner but, iron­i­cal­ly, the sea­son could end with vic­to­ry for Bayan in the list­ed, �50000 Se­lect Hur­dle, mount of Richard John­son.

'John­no', has been run­ner-up to 'AP' 16 times.

Ob­vi­ous­ly 37-year-old Richard will be hop­ing to achieve his am­bi­tion to be cham­pi­on jock­ey next sea­son but just think how revered he'd be had his neme­sis nev­er ap­peared be­cause he has rid­den nigh 3,000 win­ners.

There are al­so five flat-rac­ing cards to over-con­fuse pun­ters but the dai­ly patent al­so in­cludes First Bom­bard­ment, our first two-year-old bet of the 2015 cam­paign in the Maid­en Auc­tion Stakes over five fur­longs of 2015 cam­paign.

First Bom­bard­ment has fin­ished sec­ond in two 'Brock­les­by' races, Don­cast­er and Musel­burgh; his form bears close in­spec­tion and what beats David O'Meara's charge will win and he's napped.

My biggest hope on this mo­men­tous day is that Sir An­throny Mc­Coy (as he'll be this time next year!) rides a win­ner and 'comes out in one piece' as they say.