If things had worked out differently, horseracing could conceivably have become an Olympic sport.

The official report for the first modern Games in 1896 attributes its absence to the lack of horse culture in the original host-city, Athens.

"No preparations were made for horseracing," the document reads, adding: "the reasons for this omission were obvious.

"Greece has no horsebreed of her own, and Athens no racecourse.

"To build a circus, and to lay out a course in so short a time was quite out of the question.

"The heavy expenses of such an undertaking had also to be taken into account."

Admittedly, the racing might have resembled the chariot-racing of old - and the circus might well have been branded the original Olympic white elephant.

Racing, moreover, was not on the programme four years later, when the Games were held in horsey Paris, even though other equestrian events, such as a long-jump and a high-jump (what we would today call a "puissance") did put in an appearance.

And yet, if the Athens circus had been built, and the event judged a success, well, you just never know.

The reason for this digression into Olympic might-have-beens is a moment of pure sporting history I was privileged to witness this week amid the soft autumnal beauty of a particularly glorious patch of English countryside.

Tony McCoy, in green, riding Mountain Tunes on his way to an historic 4,000th win of his career as a jump jockey at Towcester in England

At around 3.15pm on Thursday November 7 in Towcester, a small Northamptonshire town just up the road from the Silverstone motor-racing circuit, a supreme athlete whom many in the Olympic world may not have heard of - one Anthony Peter McCoy - drove home the 4,000th winner of his quite astonishing two-decade career as a jump jockey.

To put this into some sort of context, no other jump jockey has reached even 3,000 winners; indeed, I think I am right in saying that fewer than 20 have made it to four figures.

As a statistic of sporting accomplishment, it ranks alongside Don Bradman's 99.94 Test match batting average, Pelé's 1,281 goals - or Michael Phelps's 22 Olympic medals.

But mathematics was just one of the ingredients that made the moment so special.

This is a tough, tough sport: the best jockeys get the best horses, but even McCoy can expect to be jettisoned from his mount to take his chances among the thundering hooves of his rivals about once in every 15 rides.

Injuries are inevitable; as the man himself has said, his sport is "one of the very few that an ambulance follows you around".

Yes, advances in medicine and protective equipment have played their part in enabling McCoy and some of his contemporaries to stay in the saddle for much longer than the top jockeys of three or four decades ago.

Fellow jockeys help Tony McCoy celebrate his record-breaking achivement

Even so, for sheer resilience and determination, McCoy's achievement in landing 18 consecutive champion jockey titles shares something of the indestructible, "superman" aura of baseball player Cal Ripken's remarkable 17-year streak of 2,632 consecutive games for the Baltimore Orioles.

Others, no doubt, have brought similar driven one-track mindedness to bear on pursuits from mountain climbing to politics.

But to have kept it up for so long, with such uniform excellence of outcome and at such extreme physical cost - beside the trips to emergency, many jump jockeys must continually sweat and starve to stay at a viable riding weight - speaks of a dedication rarely encountered in any field.

Something else: the sweetness of Thursday's victory was made all the more exquisite, perhaps for McCoy and undoubtedly for the four or five thousand spectators clustered in Towcester's primrose-yellow racecourse buildings willing it to happen, because it did not look feasible until the final few strides.

This photograph shows how much ground McCoy - riding a horse called Mountain Tunes and wearing the white cap and green and gold silks of owner J.P.McManus - still had to make up going over the final hurdle.

A second later, the air of contemplative resignation that had settled over the course was shattered by a guttural roar, the involuntary exhalation of four thousand racegoers realising simultaneously that they would, after all, be able to say, 'I was there'.

Thinking about it afterwards, the irresistible surge McCoy coaxed from Mountain Tunes reminded me of Phelps powering his way back from fifth at the turn to snatch gold in the Athens 2004 100 metres butterfly final.

That, though, was the fruit of hundreds of hours of training, ploughing back and forth away from the public eye in some featureless pool.

The point about Mountain Tunes's finish was that it was quintessential McCoy, just the type of closing burst that had delivered perhaps a couple of hundred of his 4,000 wins.

Entrance to Towcester Racecourse to see Tony McCoy make history was free

One final thing made Thursday special: it was almost entirely untrammelled by the trappings of commercialism.

There was no admission charge: those of us lucky enough to be there had paid exactly the same as the swan flapping languidly across the lake in the infield.

Official race-cards - now guaranteed to be collectors' items, especially if signed by the great man himself - were a princely £3 ($5/€3.50).

There were precious few billboards; the only branding I can recall, indeed, were the words "Albert Bartlett" (a potato company, apparently) on McCoy's breeches.

I am not naïve; this was partly the nature of the beast in that no-one could be quite sure when the milestone would be reached.

I also realise that elite sports need commercial income to survive and thrive - I do not think, in the circumstances, any of us would have begrudged paying £10 ($16/€12) or £20 ($32/€24) on the gate.

But given the way in which, amid the genuinely good stuff, so much insipid fare these days gets over-hyped and over-priced, Thursday blew a joyous raspberry at the gods of yield control and market forces.

Many in the Olympic world may not, as I say, have heard of him, but A.P.McCoy is a remarkable sportsman and, if things had worked out differently, he would have been a remarkable Olympian.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's horseracing book – Foinavon: the story of the Grand National's biggest upset – was published this year by Bloomsbury. To follow him on Twitter click here.