McCoy swept along by Cabin Fever

12 April 2012

Tony McCoy is placing his faith in the mastery of Jonjo O'Neill to help him break his John Smith's Grand National duck on Butler's Cabin.

The 13-times champion jockey has infamously endured 13 failed attempts in the greatest race of them all - and along with Clan Royal having been carried out by a loose horse in 2005, McCoy was travelling like the winner 12 months ago on Butler's Cabin when he tipped up at Becher's Brook on the second circuit.

"Jonjo appears to be able to get horses to peak specifically for a certain race, Clan Royal being the obvious one, and it looked like he had done the trick with Butler's Cabin last year as he was running a big race until he fell," said McCoy, who also had the choice of riding Can't Buy Time, Reveillez and L'Ami. "He ran his best race since then at Cheltenham last time so, hopefully, he is hitting form at the right time."

Despite the nine-year-old having shown little in his first three starts of the season, there was more to like about Butler's Cabin's run at the Cheltenham Festival, where he finished fifth.

"It's the Grand National, and you need a bit of luck, but we are happy with him," he added.

"Obviously Jonjo has two others in it and JP (McManus) has L'Ami, so it wasn't a straightforward decision.

"But, having won an Irish National on him, it would have been difficult to get off him.

"You'd hope that stamina is one thing he has lots of and that is one of the main reasons I picked him.

"Last year's race was the sweetest he'd travelled all year.

"Obviously he had been trained for the race, but it was the best he travelled and jumped and hopefully he'll come alive again."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Sign up you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy notice .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in