McCoy looks to cap year with star performance

Tony McCoy has had a year most people can only dream of having won the world’s most challenging and best known race, the Grand National, and become the first jockey to be named BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

However, the 36-year-old Ulsterman can round it off in proper style should he guide Kauto Star to a record fifth King George VI Chase at Kempton Park today after the race was rescheduled from yesterday because of the freezing weather.

Kauto Star, who is the only horse to have regained the Cheltenham Gold Cup, already holds the record for winning the race four times in a row – legend Desert Orchid won it four times but over a five-year stretch 1986-91.

McCoy, 15-times champion jockey, got the ride as Noel Fehily was ruled unfit with a recurrence of a wrist injury – he in turn had got the ride because trainer Paul Nicholls’s stable jockey Ruby Walsh broke his leg in November.

McCoy, though, has contacted Walsh and asked him about what is the best manner in which to ride the even money favourite, while he has also ridden him over showjumping fences at Nicholls’s stables and is really looking forward to the task ahead.

The humble Northern Irishman, who rode Don’t Push It to Grand National glory in April, was so keen to ride him that he asked close friend and retainer Jonjo O’Neill if he could opt out of riding Alberta’s Run in the King George so he could take the ride on the French-bred 10-year-old gelding.

“Like most other people in racing I have followed Kauto Star throughout his career and it is a huge thrill now to be riding such a horse, the best chaser in years, for the first time,” he wrote in his column for the Daily Telegraph.

“He did have a heavy fall in the Gold Cup (at Cheltenham in March), one of those which you are glad they get up from, but he appeared to show no ill effects when winning at Down Royal earlier this season.

“He is a long way clear on the ratings and it is very hard to see him being beaten.”

With Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Imperial Commander and another Nicholls star Denman not participating because of injury and stable strategy respectively, Kauto Star faces a field of honest but not top-class opponents.

Ironically, his main rival may come from Alberta’s Run, who was second behind him in the King George two years ago but his form has shown a decline and took a heavy fall last time out at Ascot, though, he has the class to bounce back.

Other than him the highly-rated fellow French bred Long Run, yet another Nicholls’s prospect seven-year-old The Nightingale and Sizing Europe, three relative unknown quantities may freshen up the run-in.

The Nightingale has recorded three wins in four over fences including an impressive last outing at Down Royal while two-time French Grade One victor Long Run, trained by Nicky Henderson, made an impression when winning the Grade One Feltham Chase last year.

Sizing Europe, trained in Ireland by Harry de Bromhead, has four lengths to make up on Kauto Star from their race at Down Royal but there is no question of his ability having won the Arkle Chase at the Cheltenham Festival – his trainer has risked the wrath of his family by travelling over with him and another stablemate on December 23 thereby missing Christmas.