AP McCoy: Addict jockeys story hits the silver screen

Unlike many addicts, though, he is fully aware of the affliction that permeates every reel of a captivating documentary into his final season in the saddle.

'It's like being an addict,' says the former jump jockey in Being AP, which was released in cinemas earlier this week. 'It's like a drug, I'm an addict to winning. It's all about winning, that's what you're really addicted to.'

Outside of Britain and Ireland, from where McCoy originates, he is a relative unknown but his is a story of dominance unrivaled in any sporting field.



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For 20 years, he was crowned champion National Hunt jockey -- singular success akin to Lewis Hamilton winning the Formula One world title for two straight decades or LeBron James being named MVP for every single year of his basketball career.

But like any addiction, McCoy's is unhealthy.

It is laid bare by his wife Chanelle, arguably the star of the documentary by Anthony Wonke, who was behind the recently released documentary Cristiano Ronaldo and clearly has a penchant for sporting obsessives.

In the latter stages of the documentary, she explains how for years he has been 'controlling his weight, controlling me, our relationships. He became a selfish person.'

Few moments highlight his obsessional nature quite as well as when Chanelle is rushing around the family home getting ready for a last-minute holiday to Barbados.

An injured McCoy himself has been ordered to rest up by doctors and take time out from the saddle. He sits sulking on the sofa acting as though the prospect of a week in the Caribbean is akin to being sent to a gulag while Chanelle jokes on the phone 'I'm on suicide watch.'

For the most part, she deals with living with an obsessive with good humor but there are serious undertones to the point she tries to get across.

The film documents what proves to be McCoy's final season in the saddle as he searches for that 20th straight title but begins with him unsure where his future lies.

Too often he is a closed book to the cameras but, at one point over lunch, his wife implores him to retire citing the examples of two of his peers who had to be resuscitated on the turf following falls.

She suggests it's a good year to call it a day and the wrinkles in the corner of her eye as the words come from her lips do little to hide any worry.

But her husband snaps back with 'I've had enough of this conversation.' She jokes that he could help with the children's lunch boxes or put the bins out.

And in another moment, she makes the poignant point: 'I don't want a husband I have to help out of bed every morning.'

That McCoy is able to walk away from the sport at all is a minor miracle, his a story of rehabilitation rather than redemption.

It is highlighted in an early scene with his doctor when he lists his past injuries: left cheek bone, left collarbone twice, shoulder blade, sternum, ribs all broken, back fused from T9-12, right arm, wrist, left tibia and tibia and right ankle.

With such a litany of injuries, it is no wonder that one of McCoy's rival and friend, Ruby Walsh, says 'he is made of concrete.'

Like any addict, McCoy is never properly sated. Even as he crosses the line to notch up one winner, the thought is on the next race, the thirst for the next win.

That may entail a helicopter ride across the length and breadth of the country for one ride where victory is far from assured. When is winning enough? In the case of the film's subject, never.

Watching, you worry about McCoy in his post-riding afterlife and you would be hard pressed to find a more reluctant retiree.

And you worry for his racing manager Dave Roberts, the addiction enabler, as he pores over spreadsheets like some mad mathematician trying to work out the best chance of his charge riding a winner on any given day.

Roberts is one of the few people to give an insight into what makes the rider tick, likening him to a magician in the saddle with his knowledge of the sport and feedback to trainer.

But such nuggets are thin on the ground and, in many ways, we never fully see the real McCoy, a tortured soul but a very humorous one. It's as though 'Being AP' merely chisels at the surface, no fault of Wonke's, more of the closed book he is filming.

McCoy has made no secret of the fact he never wanted the film to be made but relented for two reasons: so his young son Archie could watch back his father's achievements when old enough and to say thank you to those in the equine world that have supported him.

Modest to the core, you can imagine him squirming in his seat having to watch it with others.

For example when Chanelle tells the story of him sobbing when he was petrified of not being champion jockey next year, which she likens to 'looking at someone living in fear of themselves.'

For McCoy, he looks back on the 20 years as a dream from which he has just woken up. More fascinating would be a follow-up in the years to come to see how McCoy copes with the real world, the addict's drug of choice removed, the control freak who, at 41, simply could not control getting old.



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