Racing books for Christmas

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Tony McCoy had better watch out. His second autobiography, McCoy The Autobiography (Penguin, £18.99) has been accomplished in conjunction with Steve Taylor, whose only other book was about Graham Bradley.

As "Brad" is now inhabiting the equine Alcatraz of an eight-year suspension from the sport, it may not be a form line which McCoy cares to scrutinise too closely. The Ulsterman talks about Bradley in his book and is supportive of his old weighing-room mate, without actually discussing the unsavoury company Bradley used to keep.

The multiple champion jockey talks about himself rather more fully and is most interesting in his virtual out-of-body experiences. That said, in the heat of battle, McCoy finds it a dead-heat with impossibility to change from the driven demon he has become.

McCoy has a virulent disease and winners are the only cure. If he doesn't get one there is poison in his system until he expunges it at the racecourse. There are times when you do not talk to this man: the mornings, when he is psyching himself up; the afternoons, when he is in a cocoon going about the business of race-riding; and the evenings if he has either fallen or not gone through the card.

Yet, in moments of solitude, McCoy recognises all his faults – his attitude to his mother, his main ally Martin Pipe and his long-term girlfriend, Chanelle Burke, who gets a first mention on page 203 of the 274 – and how he hurts the ones he loves.

There is certainly a difference between what McCoy says and what he does. He has determined to take time off to smell the hoof liniment on the way, but has yet to actually master the art of relaxation. He also knows his slimming technique is not exactly a work of the British Medical Association and if there is one chapter which sells this book it is the passage which details the McCoy Plan.

Before running a bath to the correct temperature (which means barely tolerable) McCoy drinks cups of tea each with 10 spoonfuls of sugar in them, a process he feels gets his heart pumping more violently. Then he lowers himself into the steam. Sometimes the thought of so doing has him in tears.

"I know for the average person a lovely warm bath is a luxury, but, for me, it's torture," he says. "My sympathy with lobsters is real."

McCoy, though, is no lobster. He looks more like an old fish on the slab, such is the effect of his dietary regime. Yet he does not mind. He'd boil his granny to win.

Richard Johnson is barely less driven, but he is not as old as McCoy and, probably consequently, not as interesting a figure. If anyone can make his story readable, though, it is Alan Lee in Out Of The Shadows (Greenwater Publishing, £18.99).

Lee's problem here has been the main subject that makes Johnson interesting is the one he wants to talk least about. There are a few potshots flying around for the popular press in the chapter which details the jockey's relationship with Zara Phillips. But that section is 12 pages long, and far less meaty than the chapters which deal with a week in the life of a jumps jockey and Johnson's memoirs of every course in the country. Perhaps in his second biography, too, there will be more to come from Johnson.

Racing In The Dock (Highdown, £16.99) purports to be the inside story of the biggest scandal in racing history, which, though the book may not actually say so, is how the Jockey Club has been running the sport for so long. Richard Griffiths' real target is the various jockeys and hoods who have been accused of besmirching racing in the last 20 years and, most spectacularly, this last year.

Oddly, very few of the alleged miscreants have been brought to book. One who has, though, is Dermot Browne, who gives an exclusive interview here as he protests he is no modern day Baron Munchausen. Of course you're not, Dermot.

And finally, which is rather appropriate, we have Jenny Pitman's Double Deal (Macmillan £16.99), which details the struggle of woman trainer Jan Hardy in a man's world. Pitman has yet to reveal from where she got the idea for this plot. Well, Shakespeare couldn't train horses, so what do you expect?