Bygones: When Mr Mulligan's Gold Cup triumph proved making of McCoy

Rides of the genius that he was becoming, and became, Synchronised’s last-gasp win in 2012 was, arguably, McCoy’s most ‘miraculous’ achievement in the saddle – and he was, after all, the patron saint of lost causes.

Battling just to keep the proven stayer in contention, the 20-times champion jockey produced the white-faced horse, owned by JP McManus and trained by Jonjo O’Neill, with a withering late run to deny the luckless Tom Scudamore on under-rated outsider The Giant Bolster and former winner Long Run. It had to be seen to be believed.

Yet the same could also be said of his first – and often overlooked – Gold Cup triumph in 1997 when the injury-prone Mr Mulligan defied his unfancied odds of 20-1 to win emphatically.

The context is crucial. By then, County Antrim-born McCoy – champion conditional in 1994-95 – was already on the way to winning a second successive championship. Eighteen more would follow in a sporting career of unparalleled dominance.

Fresh-faced, the cherubic rider was far from the finished article, certainly not the grizzled, battle-hardened and injury-scarred veteran seen on Synchronised. Prone to whip incursions, he was still the young pretender to proven horsemen like the super-stylish Richard Dunwoody. He was also not as tactically astute. McCoy’s younger days were characterised by ‘catch me if you can’ front-running rides that so suited Martin Pipe’s horses – and which saw Make A Stand make all to win the Champion Hurdle 48 hours previously.

Still just 22, he would become just the fifth rider to complete the Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup double after Aubrey Brabazon (1949 and ’50 on Hatton’s Grace and Cottage Rake in both years); Fred Winter (1961 on Eborneezer and Saffron Tartan) and Norman Williamson (1995 on Alderbrook and Master Oats).

McCoy’s innocence was infectious. After falling from Mr Mulligan at the final fence in Kempton’s King George Chase the previous Christmas when the great grey One Man broke the course record to give the aforementioned Dunwoody a fourth win in the race, the jockey cursed his exuberance for losing out on a certain second before declaring, with confidence and conviction, that he would ride the chaser 10 weeks later at Cheltenham.

Yet the build-up was far from smooth. The horse’s work at home was so poor that trainer Noel Chance, father-in-law to McCoy’s great friend, rival and successor Richard Johnson, was almost suicidal and feared the intended jockey would, amid mounting media speculation, switch to the Pipe-trained Cyborgo – a worthy but unspectacular entry.

“Every time the phone rang I feared the worst, but, thankfully, the young man never called,” Chance recalled in The Real McCoy: My Life So Far that the jockey wrote with The Sun’s longstanding racing correspondent Claude Duval.

One schooling session at Lambourn was sufficient – just – to reassure McCoy that his intended mount, the inaugural winner of Wetherby’s Towton Novices Chase in January, 1996, had recovered from a hole in his foot.

It helped that the pre-race hype revolved around One Man – and whether his suspect stamina would hold out for Dunwoody and the grey’s Cumbrian trainer, Gordon W Richards, after the horse had fizzled out of contention 12 months previously.

“Fair play to Noel Chance, despite all the obstacles put in front of him, he had Mr Mulligan in great shape on the day,” said McCoy when he retired in 2015. “Mr Mulligan was never a particularly easy ride, he was a little bit straight-backed and wasn’t a natural jumper, but he was a doer, a galloper. When he hit the front, I knew it would take a very special horse to get past him.”

Down at the start, McCoy even had the bravado to tell Charlie Swan, riding the Pipe’s Cyborgo, that “this fella of mine feels great. If he gets round, he won’t be beaten”.

So it proved. Bouncing off the good ground, horses of the calibre of defending champion Imperial Call were already in trouble when McCoy’s mount hit the front at the fourth last.

Now, on the downhill descent, McCoy and Mr Mulligan, owned by Michael Worcester, kicked on to dramatic effect, snatching several lengths off their pursuers as Dunwoody remained motionless on One Man.

Over the third last, into the home straight, then the penultimate obstacle where Dunwoody’s presence loomed large in McCoy’s slipstream, the wise, old master about to assert his superiority over the young protégé who idolised him.

Yet McCoy had hidden reserves, clearing the final fence as One Man’s stamina ebbed away, and pulled clear.

Veering across the track towards the packed grandstands, the victor had four lengths to spare over Barton Bank with Dorans Pride, one of Ireland’s great hopes, back in third. One Man was a tired second – his finest hour would come 12 months later in the two-mile Queen Mother Champion Chase.

As McCoy stood up in his riding irons, saluting the crowd with a clenched right fist, there was no disputing the fact that he was champion on merit and not a tearaway tyro whose God-given talent would be unfulfilled.

A day later, McCoy was back in action at the now closed Folkestone racecourse. The following Tuesday, McCoy was left unconscious following a heavy fall at Uttoxeter. By then, there was no doubting his ability, though few predicted he would go on and ride more than 4,000 winners before retiring two years ago.

Christy Roche, a champion Flat jockey in Ireland, said: “Tony McCoy should be handicapped, he’s that much better than all his rivals.”

John Francome, a seven-times champion, concurred. “When I heard Christy make his remark, I nodded in agreement. I never believed that I was the world’s greatest jockey, although I admit that I may have been the shrewdest.”

The late journalist John Oaksey, who previously described the aforementioned Francome as “the best negotiator of a steeplechase fence I have seen”, acknowledged the horsemanship just witnessed. “Tony organised him from the first fence to the last. Kick or sit still, he got it right nearly every time and made two mistakes look nothing,” he eulogised.

Though Synchronised provided Sir AP McCoy with his most memorable Cheltenham win, Mr Mulligan’s Gold Cup triumph was – without doubt – the making of a champion like no other.

Johnson now hoping for change of luck

ALL eyes will be on Sir AP McCoy’s successor, Richard Johnson, when he partners Native River in this month’s Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Like his great rival, Johnson won the Gold Cup at a relatively early stage in his career when Looks Like Trouble prevailed in 2000 for his future father-in-law Noel Chance – ironically the man who saddled the McCoy-inspired Mr Mulligan to blue riband glory in 1997.

Yet, since then, Johnson has been out of luck in jump racing’s showpiece contest and victory on the Colin Tizzard-trained Welsh National winner would see a 17-year wait come to an end.

The 16-times runner-up to McCoy in the title race, Johnson, 39, is on the brink of a second successive title – despite a worthy pursuit by North Yorkshire-based Brian Hughes.

He is only the second jump jockey – after McCoy – to ride more than 3,000 winners but his record at Cheltenham has been mixed since his first victory at the NH festival in 1999 when he galvanised a ‘miraculous’ winning run out of the fast-finishing Anzum to win the Stayers’ Hurdle for the late David Nicholson.

The first of 20 winners at jump racing’s Olympics, this makes Ruby Walsh’s record 52 – and counting – successes all the more remarkable.