With the big news of AP McCoy's impending retirement, the question has been asked, if you had put €1 on every the supremely talented jockey every time he sat in the saddle, how would you do?
It's an intriguing proposition that we thought should be tested out. In order to do so we visited the Racing Post website to see what we could figure out. The figures below come from the last five seasons in Jump meetings across both Great Britain and Ireland.
Great Britain Jump Meets
Irish Jump Meets
So what all that means if you were to put €1 on every race from the past 5 years you would currently be down €640.30.
It must be noted that he is often racing horses that will be favourites. He is an anomaly in that he has an abnormal effect on the betting market where the masses tend to follow him regardless of the merits of his mount. Which is understandable given that he has maintained a win percentage of 25%, which is mighty impressive, but would not be enough to maintain a winning margin in the gambling stakes.
All in all, this obviously doesn't take away from McCoy's incredible record, in reality it just shows how bloody difficult it is to make money backing horses.
