Racing: McCoy driven by the 'desperate pain'

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Viscount Montgomery is said to have offered a misguided aside when reading the lesson at his local parish church. "The Lord says," Monty read, and then paused for a moment's reflection, before adding, "and I'm inclined to agree ...."

Anyone endorsing Jonjo O'Neill's opinion that Tony McCoy, the most compelling human performer in the Cheltenham Festival, is by a wide margin the greatest jumps rider who ever lived, risks joining the old soldier on a charge of redundancy.

However, reading O'Neill's testament did put me in mind of a wintry day in Chepstow six years ago when McCoy explained the forces which were already driving him into waves of critical acclaim. "One thing I've noticed about myself while riding all these winners," he said, "is that I'm getting very, very greedy. I go a day without a winner and I wake up the next morning obsessed with the idea that I have to win. It is a kind of pain, really desperate."

How desperate? Later that day he stepped off a stretcher a few minutes after being thrown in the path of half a field of 18 runners in a hurdle race. He appeared to land on his head. "I told the attendants that nothing major was broken. The thing was I felt I was on a good thing in the next," reported McCoy. As it turned out, he wasn't, but all it meant was that the pain had gone up a notch. No doubt it will be gnawing again in the jockeys room today at Cheltenham, where we celebrate, among so many other things, arguably the bravest men in all of sport.