AP McCoy nominated Jezki as his best chance of a winner at next week's Cheltenham Festival.

Despite riding 30 Festival winners in his career there have been barren stretches when McCoy often cut a mournful figure among the also-rans.

That burning desire of the greatest winner in the history of jump racing will be just as intense but the 19-times champion jockey will walk into the weighing room for his last Festival before retirement still remembering the sight from two years ago after John Thomas McNamara was left paralysed following a fall.

Recalling that grim day when the usual hubbub of the jockeys' room was replaced by a thoughtful stillness McCoy said: "There's no comparison to the awful low that will live in my memory when John Thomas McNamara was injured - seeing his clothes hanging up in the weighing room and knowing that he wasn't coming back.

"When we went back in the next day and his clothes were still there; that was the darkest day that I ever had at Cheltenham."

However, McCoy will put those thoughts to one side when he walks out to ride Jezki in the Stan James Champion Hurdle. This was the horse who won 12 months ago after McCoy had rejected the ride in preference for My Tent Or Yours, who finished a neck second.

The logic behind that decision had been based on Jezki's indifferent previous form and McCoy is now placing his faith that similar performances could be the precursor to lightning striking twice.

"He's definitely a horse who'd like the ground to dry up," McCoy said. "His form is pretty similar to last year - he got beaten a few times by Hurricane Fly and the same thing has happened this year. But, if the ground dries out, he's definitely got a chance.

"I know Faugheen is the one they're all talking about but I think there's no form like Champion Hurdle form. If you look back at the Champion Hurdle over the last 20 years, you'll find that the horses who ran in previous Champion Hurdles have gone back and performed really well."

The early performances of Mr Mole left McCoy despairing but this season he has evolved into a contender for the Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase, a race which he sees as being a question of how much the established stars have retained the lustre of old.

"If you'd said to me this time last year that's he'd been going for the Champion Chase I'd have laughed," McCoy admitted. "But he's improved and in what looks like a very open race, with the likes of Sprinter Sacre and Sire de Grugy maybe not as good form as they once were."

The form of the Betfred Cheltenham Gold Cup can be read more ways than the cryptic clues to a crossword with the race betting more like a handicap, with Silviniaco Conti an unconvincing favourite after flopping in the race last year. McCoy will ride Carlingford Lough, on whom he won the Hennessy Gold Cup at Leopardstown earlier this month, as he attempts to win the Gold Cup for a third time following victories on Mr Mulligan in 1997 and Synchronised in 2012.

"Hopefully he's got a very good chance in a very open Gold Cup. Silviniaco Conti has got the best form - or he's achieved the most. But all those Irish horses who ran in the Lexus and the Irish Hennessy, there's not a lot between them. He's an improving horse and, physically, he's in a better place than before."

That place for McCoy will be, as ever, in the winner's enclosure.