PERHAPS the only person who won’t have revelled in the ceaseless hype that has followed AP McCoy around from track to track this week is the man himself.

The perennial champion jockey achieved the ‘countdown to 4,000’, as it was coined by Great British Racing in the run up, after Mountain Tunes somehow got up to win at Towcester yesterday after trailing in third at the final fence.

But, while all of racing rightly strikes up in chorus at the magnitude of the achievement, the man himself has probably already moved on.

“I think the same way as I did when I started riding,” the 18-time champ relayed in his recent autobiography.

“I have the same thought process. It’s all about riding the next winner.”

Apart from Tiger Woods in his prime, and perhaps five-time Olympian Steve Redgrave, I think McCoy is the most driven sportsman I have ever seen.

Like Woods, who once won the US Open with a broken leg, McCoy has pushed himself through incredible pain and injuries that make me wince just to read about them.

There aren’t many sports where you are followed around by paramedics.

It is this courage and his dedication to excellence that deserve the plaudits as much as the mammoth figure for which he will be rightly lauded.

A year ago at Wetherby, Mr Watson spooked early on in a novice hurdle, deposited McCoy on the turf and then kicked him in the face.

Having broken a couple of teeth, and his face covered in blood as he picked himself up, McCoy subsequently visited a plastic surgeon at York Hospital – refused advice of a general anaesthetic, which would have meant an overnight stay – and had 23 stitches to his lip, nose and the inside of his mouth.

Stopping off at a dentist on his way home, two temporary crowns were fitted, and McCoy then got up the next morning to ride My Tent Or Yours to victory at Ascot.

That’s commitment.

There’s hardly a big race he hasn’t won. The Grand National, Gold Cup, Queen Mother Champion Chase, the Champion Hurdle, the Arkle – all have fallen his way.

Of the Cheltenham Festival big four, only the World Hurdle has eluded him.

He probably won’t stop until he has won it.

In the scheme of 4,000 winners, our region’s contribution to the tally has been somewhat meagre.

McCoy, who rode a double at Wetherby at the two-day Charlie Hall meeting last week, has had only 191 rides at the track and 53 winners.

Compare that with 1,011 rides and 187 victories at Cheltenham. Statistically, his most successful tracks are Newton Abbot and Worcester.

To McCoy, though, each winner is priceless.

And for the only jockey to have been named Sports Personality of the Year – a gong he received in 2010 after Don’t Push It finally ended his National jinx at Aintree – these massive numbers may never be matched.

When Stan Mellor became the first jump jockey to post 1,000 victories in December 1971 his achievement was considered astonishing.

But the likes of John Francome, Peter Scudamore and Richard Dunwoody all bettered that and Richard Johnson, a rider who seems destined to be forever in McCoy’s shadow, has notched more than 2,500 – something seldom mentioned in the midst of the Irishman’s tremendous achievement.

McCoy has quadrupled Mellor’s tally.

The question to be asked now is not how he got there but how many more he is going to get.

He may be 39, an age when many of his colleagues have decided to get out while they still have all their body parts in working order, but McCoy shows no signs of imminently retiring.

In his autobiography, he jokes about his next target – passing trainer Martin Pipe, with whom McCoy had such a long association, and his tally of 4,182 victories.

Suddenly, that’s not looking so funny.

As long as he continues to have the hunger and the desire to keep winning, and the awareness of the consequences that may bring, he could post whatever number he wants.

Figures are just that to McCoy. It’s the thrill of victory, a thirst that remains unquenched, that drives him on.

It should be fun to watch.