Champion jumps jockey Tony McCoy has been crowned BBC Sports Personality of the Year.The 15-times champion became the first person in racing to gain the nation's vote at the climax of the annual review of the sporting year.Phil Taylor, fifteen-times darts champion, was runner-up in the prestigious awards ceremony while heptathlete Jessica Ennis was third."This is an unbelievable feeling to be standing in front of so many amazing sports people - so many people who I look up to," McCoy said."I wor

Champion jumps jockey Tony McCoy has been crowned BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

The 15-times champion became the first person in racing to gain the nation's vote at the climax of the annual review of the sporting year.

Phil Taylor, fifteen-times darts champion, was runner-up in the prestigious awards ceremony while heptathlete Jessica Ennis was third.

"This is an unbelievable feeling to be standing in front of so many amazing sports people - so many people who I look up to," McCoy said.

"I work in a wonderful sport of horse racing and I'd like to thank every one of those (people) because I know that most of the (racing) public spent most of the night voting for me.

"When I started off as a jockey I wanted to be champion jockey in my mind, and I have been lucky enough to be champion jockey for 15 years.

"But the Grand National is the biggest horse race in the world and everyone knows I had won all the other races and to finally achieve that - it was just an unbelievable day."

McCoy has ridden more than 3000 winners and has claimed just about every big race in the National Hunt calendar including the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle and King George VI Chase.

However, it was his first victory in the Grand National on the Jonjo O'Neill-trained Don't Push It in April that finally endeared him to the wider public.

Success in the country's premier award will be seen by the racing industry as the ultimate recognition for a career during which McCoy has rewritten the record books time and again.

Despite breaking just about every bone in his body, some more than once, he has dominated the sport ever since he became champion jockey for the first time in the 1995-96 season.

Not only is he by far the winning-most jockey in jumps history, he even overcame the legendary Sir Gordon Richards' all-time record total of 269 winners in a season in 2002.

"Without Jonjo O'Neill I wouldn't be standing here because I definitely wouldn't have won the Grand National without him," he said.

"To win it for JP and Norah McManus (owners of Don't Push It) was an unbelievable feeling because I knew they wanted to win it as much as I did."