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McCoy won't win us over, but his artistry will

VINCENT, I've got a great idea. Leave the paints alone for once.

VINCENT, I've got a great idea. Leave the paints alone for once.

We'll take a walk in the countryside, stop for lunch somewhere, then get back to Arles and go to that cafe you like for a pint and a game of billiards. You've earned a break, it'll be ever so good for you and you'll come back full of beans.

But Vincent always says no. He knows that the number of masterpieces he paints in any one day is directly related to the time he gets up in the morning. He can't stop. Daren't stop. Sure you don't want a drink, Vincent? No thanks, I've got one ear.

In the face of immense, untiring achievement and a superhuman body of work, we tend to offer a complicated response. We start off with "how marvellous", but then we have a bit of a think on and say: "well, it's not the life I'd choose myself". And we start to feel that there is something missing in these monumental high achievers who just go on and on. It seems they can do so much because they can get by without the stuff the rest of us need. They create from what they lack.

Which brings us to A.P. McCoy, who on Thursday rode his 4,000th winner in jump racing - and is still unsated. He's 1,500 winners ahead of anyone else. A.P., don't you think you should find a moment to stop and smell the flowers? F*** the flowers, he's got a horse to ride.

What, again? Yes, again. And he knows we don't understand, knows we can't understand, and he really doesn't care. Bring him a horse, some stuff to leap over and a sporting chance of victory and he's off. He'll be at it tomorrow. Bored with horses? Bored with racing? Bored with winning? Did Vincent get bored with sunflowers?

Did Sachin get bored with centuries? Sachin Tendulkar is now playing in his last-but-one Test match at the age of 40; he was out for 10 in the first innings against West Indies in Kolkata. He has made 100 centuries in international cricket, in the course of scoring more than 34,000 runs with a possible three innings still to play. He has played in 199 Test matches and 463 one-day internationals.

He started when he was 16. He has never known anything else, apart from childhood. Has he kept going for so long because he still loved it? Or because he has no idea how normal people live and needs desperately to hang on to what he knows and understands? Should we pity him a little as well as salute him?

He has gone where no cricketer has been before. He has never said to himself: "well, I've done as well as can be reasonably expected so now I can take it easy". He never saw any logical reason to stop. For him, a century was not as a conclusion but a new beginning. In his career he has continued the same way: never sated, never bored, always taking the logical next step, regardless of no one having taken such a step before.

And, in a sense, he too has created from what he lacks. The mighty things that he has achieved have come - at least in part - from the fact that he has never done anything else and, it seems, has never wanted to.

So there were Manchester United making heavy weather against Real Sociedad in the Champions League earlier this week. They played their time-honoured tactic: when in doubt, give it to Giggsy. Ryan Giggs is still playing top-class football. He was a juvenile prodigy, now he's a senile prodigy - very like Tendulkar. He made his debut for Manchester United at 17, and he'll be 40 in a couple of weeks.

McCoy rode his first winner at 17 and is now 39. McCoy, Tendulkar, and Giggs: all three have had good luck with injuries and good luck with genes too, possessing bodies that refuse to wear out. They have also had - well, I was going to write talent to burn, but that would be wrong. Each has maximised every ounce of the vast allotment of talent that he possessed.

But of course, they all have something beyond that: the quality that forbids you to stop. You could find it in Sir Steve Redgrave, who against all advice and all logic went for a fifth Olympic gold medal and won it. You can find it in Jonny Wilkinson, the only person on earth who believed that his merciless run of injuries would come to an end and allow him to play top-level rugby again. You can find it in Dame Kelly Holmes, who for the first time went into a leading championship fully fit at the age of 34 and won two Olympic gold medals.

Most of us aren't like that. Most of us would be bored to death. And because of that, there is a small part of us that is inclined to sneer about people who dedicate their lives to one thing. McCoy may be the best jump jockey that ever threw a leg over a horse but he's never read Proust/seen the blue whale/ hitchhiked across Europe/done all the things I've done/done all the things you've done. Such people seldom have a great interest in world crises, the future of theatre, abstract thought, identifying warblers by song, quantum mechanics, liberation theology, the haiku of Basho or the meaning of life. Why should they?

True, most of us could put together a hefty list of stuff that matters to us, but these masters of victory and longevity are not most people. Call them limited if you like, but remember that in one very specific way, they are people without any sort of limit whatsoever.

There's a fox and hedgehog thing going on here. The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. And the truth is that foxes are commonplace: most of us pride ourselves on our foxiness. We call it hinterland and are proud to have one, perhaps a little inclined to patronise people who lack one.

But it's the hedgehogs who do great things. They have one big secret and they pursue it to the very ends of the earth, for as long as mind and body hold up. Summary of a biography of James Joyce: he stayed at home and wrote. What colourful stuff did Van Gogh get up to in Arles? His paintings. The rest is all flumdiddle.

It's the same with the biographies of great athletes. He/she started early, showed immense promise, played sport for 20 or more years and won stuff. And so we start off by admiring them, we make a small detour of pity and faint contempt, and then we come back to admiration - of a deeper and more understanding kind.

I'll close with a favourite story. Chris Evert, still a teenager, was playing an equally promising rival - and thumped the living daylights out of her. In the locker-rooms afterwards, her opponent said loudly to the walls: "Thank God my happiness doesn't depend on winning a tennis match".

Chrissie replied equally loudly: "Thank God mine does."

The Times

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/the-times-sport/mccoy-wont-win-us-over-but-his-artistry-will/news-story/b62ff43d1f06af9afc80d1aca2f11bbf