Tony McCoy delivers perfect punchline with victory in Hennessy Gold Cup

You don't ride over 4,300 winners without great timing but Tony McCoy's punchline in securing a first ever Hennessy Gold Cup success on Carlingford Lough was perfect enough to have a 11,259 Leopardstown crowd rolling in breathless admiration.

Just 24 earlier the legendary champion jockey rode his 200th winner of the season and stunned the sporting world by announcing he will retire towards the end of a campaign which will assuredly see him crowned champion again for 20th time and wind up perhaps the most remarkable riding career in history.

Even in victory McCoy can rarely be mistaken for a graduate of the Frankie Dettori celebratory school but that Newbury announcement on the back of Mr Mole was notably doleful.

So the contrast with the €150,000 Hennessy success could hardly have been more pronounced, McCoy enthusiastically punching the air and smiling broadly in the midst of a rapturous reception that ranked with anything the Dublin course has seen in recent decades.

During those decades McCoy has mopped up most of Leopardstown’s prestigious prizes, including an Irish Champion Hurdle and two editions of the Lexus Chase, leaving the Hennessy a glaring and rare blank on his big-race CV.

Power-packed

However, on his last attempt, and possibly his last appearance in silks at the track, he filled the gap with a typically power-packed display to force the 4/1 Carlingford Lough home by three parts of a length from Foxrock, with the Cheltenham Gold Cup-winner Lord Windermere in third. In the circumstances, even Hollywood might have considered such a script on the schmaltzy side, especially since McCoy had earlier also won a handicap hurdle on Sort It Out for his boss JP McManus. But there has always been a remorselessness to the man in a close finish that made it seem almost inevitable.

Foxrock might have been an appropriately named big-race winner for Leopardstown but as he gallantly succumbed in the closing stages, even his trainer Ted Walsh couldn't quibble too much with the popular view that, as results go, this one was pretty much perfect.

“You can’t fight fate: it was obviously meant to happen. I suppose the sad thing is I won’t be doing it for much longer,” said McCoy although any sadness seemed swamped by a sense of satisfaction, both with Carlingford Lough’s result, and with the wider picture which saw the jockey deflect any attempt to pin him down to an actual date when he will bow out.

Cheltenham next month and Aintree in April are definitely on the agenda, but McCoy added: “It could be the last day of the season, it could be beforehand: it’s not something I’ve set a specific day or date on.” That reflects a determination to finish his landmark career on his terms, a phrase he used repeatedly.

Tough decision

“I want to go when people are asking ‘why am I retiring and not ‘why am I not retiring’,” he said. “It was always going to be tough decision. I’m still enjoying it and riding reasonably well, and I want to retire as champion jockey and on my terms.”

McCoy first broached the ‘R’ word with McManus at the end of last season and confessed that when injury finished his dream of riding 300 winners this season, he “struggled a bit mentally” in November. But this latest major victory is likely to only make him even hungrier in the next couple of months.

“I said I would retire so there would be no speculation and I could enjoy the last few months that are left, which I intend to do,” he said.

This Hennessy proved one of the great figures in Irish sporting history will have plenty of company in enjoying the run-in to retirement.