Racing: McCoy enjoys last laugh to lay Festival curse

Tony McCoy didn't exactly manage grace under pressure. He is too driven for that. But the great roar which engulfed Cheltenham when he brought in his first winner of the Festival in the gloaming last night soared beyond such niceties. It was a salute to a purely visceral requirement to win.

McCoy drove the 2-1 Liberman home with the kind of ruthless commitment that carried more than an old echo of Lester Piggott.

He took up the running around four furlongs out and drove the five-year-old up the hill with a ferocity that provoked some experts to believe a meeting with the stewards might be one sequel to the end of what he plainly had begun to believe was a Cheltenham curse.

When he came into the winners' enclosure one voice sailed beyond the barrage of cheers, "It's about time," was the yell, and McCoy, who had earlier been thrown from his saddle for a third time at the meeting, gritted his teeth and agreed, "It's taken a while but we got there in the end. Yesterday's horses were 10-1 shots and there were no excuses. Tiutchev laid down on me, fell in a hole, and so this became very important.

"It was a terrific training performance, laying off this horse since last November and aiming at this race and putting it away." How many demons McCoy put away when he held off the field across those last lung-tearing yards can only be a matter of speculation.

What was clear enough in the dusk was a growing consensus about the nature of McCoy's competitive greatness. It is not so much some sublime communication with the gods, but a huge, relentless appetite for the business of winning. He concedes that last year's record-shattering haul of 289 winners could only have been achieved in the production line of Martin Pipe's Somerset training establishment – and after winning on Liberman McCoy did explain his approach to the day that followed Tuesday's crushing experience of two falls and no wins.

"I knew I had some good horses today and I wanted to be right to take advantage. I was fine when it came to race today."

That was a condition which was, however, confirmed only by his 14th Festival win. Certainly it was in some doubt for most of a grey, cold day. The body language of McCoy is usually spoken in the extremes you would expect from a man who inhabits the highest ground of intense competition but when he fell from the saddle of the much fancied Tiutchev at the fourth fence of yesterday's big race, the Queen Mother Champion Chase, there was a rare hint of resignation.

He fell quite gently, and when he got to his feet, in rather leisurely fashion, he put his left hand on his hip and with his right he tapped his whip against his leg as the field streamed away from him. It made an interesting comparison with the reaction of his countryman Vinnie Keane, who later in the race fell from Latalomne while in a winning position for the second successive year. Three times Keane beat his whip against the ground, before throwing himself down in frustration. "I couldn't believe it when it happened a second time," he said

Some of McCoy's admirers were suspecting that their hero was beginning to find catastrophe all too believable in the valley where he brilliantly annexed the great prizes of the Champion Hurdle and the Gold Cup on Make a Stand and Mr Mulligan in 1997 and later became the only jockey in Festival history to win four successive races.

Such glory was supplanted only by grief last year when he was never a factor in the race for top jockey and saw his mount Valiramix put down after falling and breaking its leg as it apparently cruised to victory in the Champion Hurdle.

Some said that McCoy was paying for his commitment to a stable which sometimes seems most notable for the quantity of its winners rather than their quality, but yesterday, at the last call, McCoy's winning desire was rampant again.

One old National Hunt rider was certainly prepared to announce the rebirth of a giant urge to win. "That," he said after Liberman was driven home, "rather disproves the theory that McCoy is a mental and physical wreck. That was a tremendously judged and powerful performance." The great Jonjo O'Neill was earlier wryly dismissive of the suggestion that McCoy was slipping back among the pack. "He's useless, isn't he? No, he's best the best there's been – after me." Then O'Neill's smile slid away and he said, "The truth is it's awfully hard to win at this place. You win one race and you are entitled to feel happy."

Happiness perhaps was not a condition too easily attached to Tony McCoy last night. But he had won a race at Cheltenham. Which meant he was alive again.