McCoy grew up in Sydney and spent his teenage years as a motorcycle speedway rider, competing in Division 2 events at tracks including the Newcastle Motordrome alongside riders such as Todd Wiltshire and Craig Boyce. He finished second in the New South Wales Division 2 championship in November 1990, and made his first 125 cc world championship appearances in 1992 — only four months after his first road race of any kind.
McCoy entered the 125 cc World Championship full-time in 1993, missing races through injury in both that year and 1994. In 1995 he had his most productive 125 cc season, winning the Malaysian Grand Prix and the Australian Grand Prix, scoring seven further top-three finishes, and taking one pole position.
McCoy joined the Hardwick Racing Shell Advance Honda team in 1998 for his first full season in the 500 cc premier class on an NSR500. He scored points in six of the nine races he started before a broken ankle ended his year. He was without a competitive ride at the start of 1999, at one point considering a return to cabinet-making, but joined the WCM team mid-season. He finished third at the Valencia Grand Prix before the year ended.
The 2000 season was the defining chapter of McCoy's career. Riding for WCM, he opened the year with a victory at the South African Grand Prix at Welkom — a result that surprised the field. McCoy had found a way to extract maximum performance from the large 16.5-inch Michelin tyre that other riders struggled with, his sideways riding style and slight build working in harmony with the tyre's characteristics. Two further wins followed at Portugal and Valencia. His Valencia triumph was the most recent win for a non-Honda satellite machine until Fabio Quartararo's victory at Jerez in 2020. The three-win campaign secured fifth overall in the 500 cc championship.
A broken wrist sustained at the French Grand Prix disrupted 2001, and 2002 brought further difficulty after McCoy moved to Kawasaki's factory MotoGP project. He and teammates Andrew Pitt and Alex Hofmann rarely qualified in the top 15, and McCoy scored points on only three occasions.
For 2004, McCoy joined NCR Ducati in the Superbike World Championship, winning at Philip Island and finishing sixth overall. The following year he raced for Carl Fogarty's Foggy Petronas team as the outfit worked to make its 900 cc three-cylinder machine competitive, but results did not improve significantly through nine rounds.
McCoy joined Triumph's newly formed Supersport World Championship campaign in 2008 aboard the Daytona 675. Despite a mechanical retirement in the opening race at Losail and a major crash at Brno when he struck the decelerating machine of Andrew Pitt, he scored a sixth place at Philip Island. In 2009 he gave Triumph its first World Supersport podium with third place at Donington, then matched that result at the final round in Portimao, finishing the season eighth overall.
McCoy was expected to continue with Triumph for 2010 but departed by mutual consent — a characterisation he disputed. He had also been set to return to MotoGP with the FB Corse team on a two-cylinder 800 cc project, but that deal collapsed when the team failed to make the machine competitive, and McCoy announced the termination of the contract in June 2010.
Separately, McCoy worked as a test rider for Ilmor's X3 800 cc MotoGP prototype, making two wildcard appearances in the final rounds of the 2006 MotoGP season.
McCoy's sliding technique and the 2000 500 cc campaign remain his most distinctive contributions to motorcycle racing. His three wins that season, achieved with a style no other premier-class rider of the era replicated, demonstrated that unconventional approaches could unlock machinery that resisted conventional setups. His career across four different championship categories and more than fifteen years of international competition reflects a tenacity that outlasted the era he first made his mark in.