‘Pain is temporary, losing is permanent.’<\/p>\n
A local TV and film producer has spent over a year working with one of Britain\u2019s greatest sporting heroes. Simon Ford<\/strong> talks to Fergus Byrne<\/strong> about the imminent release of Being AP<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u2018Being AP<\/em> is an unusual film\u2019, says Simon Ford, Broadoak resident and executive producer of a new film that follows, in intimate detail and over the course of a full year, the life of champion jockey A.P. McCoy\u2014the best and most accomplished sportsman in the British Isles. \u2018It is an epic tale of a man who, having dominated his sport for a generation, is still operating at the peak of his powers\u2019 says Simon. \u2018But he is all to aware that no one, not even he, can remain champion forever.\u2019<\/p>\n For those not familiar with A.P. McCoy, he is a man addicted to winning. In over twenty years as a horse-racing jockey, he achieved legendary status in the UK, tallying up more than 4,000 wins, despite being taller (at 5\u201910\u201d) than most of his peers. In this gripping documentary, McCoy nears the age of forty and confronts a fate that unnerves him more than any injury: the pressure to retire.<\/p>\n With such a history in a sport followed by millions, Being AP<\/em>\u00a0could easily have become a hagiography but as Scott Tobias pointed out in Variety<\/em>, it felt like \u201cthe work of an official biographer who went a little bit rogue\u201d. Simon Ford agreed, \u2018Although we believed that, remarkably, his extraordinary achievements hadn\u2019t been fully acknowledged outside the racing world, we didn\u2019t want to make a fan movie. Instead, we wanted to make a film that went beyond the clich\u00e9s of the modern-day sport. Something that swept away the array of PR managers who believe they can best burnish their clients\u2019 reputations by never letting them say or do anything interesting. Fortunately, we had a willing ally in A.P. McCoy. From day one he wanted us to see and feel the pain as well as the pleasure that comes with his addiction to winning.\u2019 McCoy is a complicated figure whose drive for greatness comes with risks and sacrifices. Director Anthony Wonke follows him on his tireless journey from race to race\u2014sometimes several in a day\u2014as he tries to push his record out of reach for future challengers. It\u2019s rare for an athlete of McCoy\u2019s accomplishments to give a documentary crew so much access. Cinematographers Thomas Elliott and Andrew Thompson make the most of it, capturing horse racing in all its beauty and intensity with new camera technology that brings us closer to the jockey\u2019s experience than was ever possible before. Again and again, we watch McCoy shrug off bad falls and keep racing. Echoing her husband\u2019s deepest fears Chanelle declares \u201cPain is temporary, losing is permanent.\u201d<\/p>\n A keen racing fan himself, Simon Ford is all too aware of the dangers that go hand in hand with the spectacle, colour and excitement of a sport that has lifted and dashed the hopes of so many. \u2018I am reluctant to stray into sporting clich\u00e9s myself\u2019 he says. \u2018But it is a fact that being a jockey is the only job you do where you must always be followed by an ambulance. Well for a year we also joined the ride, and it has been a privilege for our team to observe a true champion at work from the inside.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ‘Pain is temporary, losing is permanent.’ A local TV and film producer has spent over a year working with one of Britain\u2019s greatest sporting heroes. Simon Ford talks to Fergus Byrne about the imminent release of Being AP. \u2018Being AP is an unusual film\u2019, says Simon Ford, Broadoak resident and executive producer of a new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,15],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-2508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-articles","category-features","tag-fergus-byrne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAnd there was no shortage of pain. As well as the physical agony McCoy experienced with shattered ribs, punctured lungs, breaks in his collarbone, shoulder, arm and sternum, the pain that his wife Chanelle feels is open and clear. While he approaches every race with the fear of losing, his wife is more worried about bodily harm. Over the course of McCoy\u2019s career, races have gotten faster, making jumps more perilous and accidents more life-threatening. Chanelle wants to ensure her husband\u2019s future as a father to their two young children, and the tension between the couple escalates as McCoy nears a decision about his future.<\/p>\n