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All Quotes by author - Tony McCoy
" A helmet is the most important part of any jockey's kit because of the number of falls you take, so I wouldn't want to be wearing anything on the track unless it had been thoroughly tested. "
Important
You
Want
" A lot of healing is in the mind. I'm not talking about serious illnesses like cancer. I'm talking about ordinary broken bones. Healing begins in the head. You have to convince yourself you can do it. "
Mind
Yourself
Broken
" By the nature of the sport and the danger we face daily, we are very close knit. Some of us have spent most of our lives together. To give you an example, having spent two decades sitting next to Richard Johnson and seeing him virtually every day, I have probably spent more time with him than I have my family, and he the same. "
Day
Time
Nature
" Doctors are fantastic, but they err on the side of caution. But you can push yourself. You're not going to die from pain. "
You
Push
Pain
" During every race, an ambulance trails the riders around the course. You know that sometimes you are going to end up in the back of that ambulance. "
Sometimes
You
Back
" Essentially, I am a dreamer. I've dreamed all my life. When I started, I dreamed I'd be Champion because it is a sport that is all about the people who win the most, and I have a fear of not winning. "
Champion
Win
Fear
" Even though people involved in racing think that it has a big sporting stage, it is a minority sport compared to some of the other high-profile events: football, Formula One or golf. "
Golf
People
Racing
" For eight or 10 years, I got wrapped up in chasing records. Everything was a number. Didn't matter what I won, it was a number. Every horse I rode was a number. "
Years
Horse
Everything
" From a public perspective, the Grand National is the biggest race of all, and not to have won it yet is definitely a failure. But there's been a lot of jockeys every bit as good and better than me that haven't won it - John Francome, Peter Scudamore, Jonjo O'Neill, Charlie Swan, to name a few. "
Name
Perspective
Failure
" Horses are like people - they have different personalities. They can be nice, friendly and hard-working, or awkward, difficult and lazy. If horses were people, some would be on the dole, and others would be entrepreneurs. "
Nice
Be Nice
Difficult
" I am disappointed when I don't win, because I want to believe I can win on every horse I ride, which is a ridiculous thing to think. Even if I'm on a horse that I have woken up thinking has no chance, by the time I've reached the course, I'll have convinced myself that it can win and will be disappointed if it doesn't. "
Myself
Time
Think
" I am quite hard to live with, and I know that if I go through a bad run, I'm not the best company and am best left alone. But I'm not nearly as bad as people like to make out. "
Alone
People
Live
" I could never have ridden 4,000 winners without loving my job, and If I ever get to the point where I'm not loving it, I'll stop. "
Point
Never
Loving
" I don't know which is stronger: the thrill of winning or the fear of failure. I don't know which one affects me most. I don't know where the middle is. "
Know
Me
Middle
" I dream up things, and then I convince myself that they're possible. "
Myself
Possible
Things
" I feel pressure every day. It is only pressure that I put on myself, but I would expect all professional sportspeople to feel pressure to perform their best whenever they are at work. "
Professional
Best
Day
" If I go racing tomorrow and I have five rides that all get beaten, all I want to do is get out there the next day and put it right. I hate having Sundays off; I hate having any day off. "
Right
Racing
Hate
" If summer racing didn't exist, I could go on holiday, yes, because nobody else would then be riding winners; but as long it goes ahead, I'll do it for the reason that I want to ride more winners than anyone else. "
Ride
Summer
Holiday
" If you ask most trainers who have ridden which pressure is greater - watching your horse or riding it - they will tell you it is harder watching it because you have no control over what happens. "
You
Riding
Control
" If you break your sternum or your ribs, you can still move. It's going to hurt, but if you can cope with it, you'll do it. "
Move
Hurt
You
" If you've got a regular feed of winners, you control your mind to do it. It becomes a must. If you didn't have that regular flow of winning, whether you could get yourself to do that, I don't know. It's a lot easier when you know the next day you can win and you can win and win, it's worth doing it. "
Winning
Mind
Day
" I get butterflies before going out to ride every day, but they disappear as soon as I am on a horse, and I think that is the same for most jockeys. Then it is just down to you and the horse, and there is a certain freedom in that. "
Think
I Am
Horse
" I have found the right way to deal with my diet, largely through trial and error, but also by having good people around me all the time, and they have given me the right advice for my body. "
Good People
Me
People
" I have seen countless colleagues struggle to come to terms with retirement. I learned a lot from Richard Dunwoody when he was riding, and I completely understand why he took off and undertook what most people consider mad challenges. "
Struggle
Colleagues
People
" I know from sitting around with injuries how difficult life will be without racing and riding winners. "
Know
Injuries
Sitting
" I like challenging myself. I'm not a person who likes not to work. "
Likes
Like
Who
" I'm very lucky that I love what I do. I've never thought of it as work. I've never done it for the money. "
Thought
Lucky
Done
" I'm very lucky to live my life through a sport that I love. I'm in a very privileged position that my work is my hobby. "
Work
Life
Live
" I never had a written contract, was never officially a stable jockey. "
Never
Had
Contract
" In my opinion, the power of the mind in sport is vital. If you can overpower those physical risks mentally, you can get your body round it physically. I've made my body do things because of my mind that it shouldn't have been able to do. "
Body
Risks
Power
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