What was Tony McCoy’s lowest seasonal total as a professional jockey?

Tony McCoy, or Sir Anthony McCoy to give him his full title, called time on his record-breaking career in the saddle after finishing third on the aptly-named Box Office in the bet365 Handicap Hurdle at Sandown Park on April 25, 2015. In the 2014/15 season, as a whole, he rode 231 winners, thereby running away with the Jump Jockeys’ Championship for the twentieth consecutive season and taking his career total to 4,348 winners under National Hunt rules.

Notwithstanding the 1994/95 season, in which McCoy became Champion Conditional Jockey with a then-record 74 winners – losing his right to claim in February, 1995 – he rode at least 140 winners in every season between 1995/96 and 2014/15. McCoy recorded his lowest seasonal total as a professional jockey, 140, in 2014/15. He did, however, suffer a well-publicised back injury, fracturing two vertebrae in a fall at Warwick in January, and had to resort to kriotherapy in order to be fit for the Cheltenham Festival.

Along the way, McCoy passed several notable landmarks. As long ago as the 1997/98 season, he rode 253 winners, thereby beating the previous record for the number of winners in a single National Hunt season, 221, set by Peter Scudamore in 1988/89. In the 2001/02 season, McCoy rode 289 winners, beating the previous record for the number of winners in a single season under either code, 269, set by Sir Gordon Richards in 1947. On August 27, 2002, Mighty Montefalco at Uttoxeter brought up win number 1,700 of his career, making him the most successful jockey, numerically, in the history of National Hunt racing in Britain.