TONY MCCOY SAYS he finding it hard to come to the terms with the death of Synchronised.

The Jonjo O’Neill-trained nine-year-old was euthanised after last Saturday’s Grand National at Aintree, weeks after winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

After falling at the notorious Becher’s Brook, Synchronised proceeded to jump more obstacles riderless before suffering a broken leg.

“It is no understatement to say that he was one of our favourite horses, and that’s not just because he won a Gold Cup,” McCoy writes today in his Telegraph column.

“It has hit the whole team — from [owner] JP McManus and his family, who bred him, to Jonjo O’Neill and the team at Jackdaw’s [O'Neill's yard] as well as me — very hard.

“The loss of any horse is painful, but it makes it all the more painful because he was such a great horse. Ironically, I had much heavier falls than he seemed to have and the last I saw of Synchronised was the horse getting up and galloping off into the distance, looking absolutely fine.

“What happened then is still unclear to all of us, but losing any horse remains the toughest, saddest part of the job of being a jockey.”

Read the full column here>

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