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McCoy Bids Farewell Without Box Office Finish

There was no blockbuster ending for Tony McCoy on board Box Office.

The serial champion could do no better than third in his final ride, but he was received like a Grand National winner regardless.

'AP' was cheered from parade ring to the start and all the way back again by an 18,000-capacity crowd at Sandown Park on his final day as a jockey.

The 20-times champion jockey had two chances to add to his career tally of 4,358 jumps winners in Britain and Ireland, but neither was able to stretch the target for future generations even further into the distance.

Riding Mr Mole in the race named for him, the AP McCoy Celebration Chase, he could manage only third. It made little difference to his public, many of whom had backed it in to unlikely favouritism.

When Box Office followed suit, the greatest career in racing was over.

McCoy announced that this season would be his last in February, turning the final meetings of his remarkable career into a lap of honour at the courses he has dominated for two decades.

If the public and media reaction has slightly surprised a man whose feats have been matched by humility, he was at least used to what he would get at Sandown Park.

There were AP face masks, fans in the famous green-and-gold colours of his principal employer JP McManus, and a banner calling for a knighthood to go with the 20th consecutive Champion Jockey trophy, which he will now get to keep.

After 25 years straining to keep ahead of his rivals and living under the tyranny of the weighing scales - he is 6'1" but rides at just 10st 5lbs, McCoy is certain he is doing the right thing.

Quite how he is to channel the remarkable discipline and drive that made him so formidable is another question, and one he is not quite ready to answer. He may even fear it.

"I haven't a clue," he said when asked if he knows what he will do on his first day as an ex-jockey.

"I know there will be dark days ahead as I try and replace it, this has been my life and all I know is that something that I have always done is about to end. It does worry me a little because I have enjoyed the discipline this gives me."

As well as the adoration of his public, McCoy exits to praise from his sporting peers. It is, he says, an honour.

"To hear Arsene Wenger [manager of his beloved Arsenal], Lee Westwood, people like that praising me, it makes me very proud," he said.

They, and practically every other athlete in any sport of McCoy's era, would give their right arm for his record of dominance and appetite for victory. This was not just the end of a career, but an era.

It is not just the punters who will be poorer for his exit. Britain may just have said farewell to the greatest sportsman of his generation.