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| Small Data: How much would you have won backing McCoy? | Small Data: How much would you have won backing McCoy? |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Tony McCoy has been the dominant jockey of a generation and is expected to be crowned champion jockey for an extraordinary twentieth time before he retires next month, writes Anthony Reuben. | Tony McCoy has been the dominant jockey of a generation and is expected to be crowned champion jockey for an extraordinary twentieth time before he retires next month, writes Anthony Reuben. |
| Do you remember the film Back to the Future 2? In it, a character called Biff takes a copy of Grays Sports Almanac 1950 to 2000 and gives it to his younger self in 1955, who makes a fortune gambling with it. | Do you remember the film Back to the Future 2? In it, a character called Biff takes a copy of Grays Sports Almanac 1950 to 2000 and gives it to his younger self in 1955, who makes a fortune gambling with it. |
| If you could go back in time armed not with a book of sporting statistics but the knowledge that AP McCoy would be the top jockey for two decades, what could you win? | If you could go back in time armed not with a book of sporting statistics but the knowledge that AP McCoy would be the top jockey for two decades, what could you win? |
| You'd have done very well on an accumulator betting that he would be champion jockey 20 times, but you would have had to wait ages for the money. | You'd have done very well on an accumulator betting that he would be champion jockey 20 times, but you would have had to wait ages for the money. |
| How about if you'd gone back to 2000 and decided to put £1 on him to win every race he rode in? | How about if you'd gone back to 2000 and decided to put £1 on him to win every race he rode in? |
| Bad news I'm afraid, according this website, you'd have lost £1,743.63. | |
| If you could have remembered to only back him when he was racing at Sandown, Ascot and Leicester you could have made a decent profit, but hardly enough to cover whatever you'd had to spend on the time machine. . | If you could have remembered to only back him when he was racing at Sandown, Ascot and Leicester you could have made a decent profit, but hardly enough to cover whatever you'd had to spend on the time machine. . |
| Over his career he has won about one in four of the races he has entered. This season he's actually above his average win rate at 28%, with 223 winners so far. | |
| But you'd still have lost more than £100 backing him in every race. In fact, there are hardly any jockeys you would make money backing blindly (they're the ones with a plus next to their level stake). | |
| I suppose the problem is that once you've been champion jockey a few times you get to ride better horses and the bookmakers start setting the odds accordingly. | I suppose the problem is that once you've been champion jockey a few times you get to ride better horses and the bookmakers start setting the odds accordingly. |
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