King of the Coups

People who follow horse racing generally get the bug in one of two ways. They either get involved through a love for the horses and the spectacle of seeing supreme athletes compete or they are initially drawn in by the lure of gambling and the intrigue that surrounds that aspect of the game.

Most followers of racing, even the ones that don’t bet, love nothing more than to see the bookies get caught out by a well-orchestrated gamble. Tales of famous coups like Yellow Sam and Gay Future are as much a part of the folklore of the sport as the exploits of elite equine stars such as Honeysuckle and Frankel.

Despite the potential benefit these gambles have for drawing new fans to the sport of horse racing the authorities cannot openly condone betting coups like Yellow Sam when they occur. There is invariably a hint of underhand behaviour involved which makes it impossible for the authorities to praise them and it’s normally left to the media to push that narrative. It was the best part of 40 years after Barney Curley’s Yellow Sam coup was landed at Bellewstown that the industry started to use the story to promote the sport.

In these days of algorithms and affordability checks true betting coups are becoming increasingly rare. The bookmakers have addressed potential weaknesses within their operations and their early warning systems are now so advanced that it’s virtually impossible to get any meaningful amount of money on a horse on the morning of a race. The bookmakers themselves crank their marketing machines into overdrive whenever a gamble is landed as they ultimately know they are good for their business.

Despite this, there is a small band of diehards that still persist in trying to pull the wool over the bookies eyes and spend all their time planning and plotting their next coup. Like a child robbing an orchard, it’s often more about the buzz of the chase than eating the apples.

Armagh-based Kitchen fitter turned racehorse trainer Ronan McNally is the latest King of the coups. He hit the headlines when his Dreal Deal (20/1 - 6/4) won a handicap hurdle at Navan in September 2020 off a basement mark of 84. Over the following six weeks the horse rattled off four more handicap wins and reached a hurdle rating of 145 after landing the 2021 Grade 2 Moscow Flyer Novice Hurdle at Punchestown this time last year. That is more than four stones of improvement in as many months. Dreal Deal’s Navan win and a subsequent victory on the flat at Limerick are part of an on-going investigation by the IHRB that is set to conclude next month.

In March 2021 a filly called All Class (66/1 - 9/2) won a flat handicap at Navan for Meath trainer David Dunne. She appeared on the race card as being in the ownership of a Paul Dunne but it later transpired that Ronan McNally owned at least part of the six-year-old. McNally also admitted in July last year that he had an involvement in Full Noise (12/1 - 8/11) when it won at Punchestown in May 2021, at the time officially owned and trained by David Dunne.

McNally was training under a restricted licence at the time which was used as the excuse as to why Dunne was training those horses. Both horses, and another called Petrol Head, have since transferred from Dunne to McNally’s Armagh stables.

On 14 December last year at Catterick a McNally-trained horse called Vee Dancer won its third race in the space of nine days in the UK. Prior to the quick-fire UK hat-trick he horse had previously finished unplaced on all eight outings in Ireland. By coincidence, on the same Catterick card there was a significant gamble landed on a horse owned and trained by Herefordshire based Ryan Potter, named Pittsburg (16/1 - 11/4).

Interestingly, Pittsburg had previously been trained in Ireland by James Black and arrived to Potter with the unappealing form figures of P00PP. McNally himself has sourced horses from Black in the past, including a horse he currently trains called Impressive Duke.

Potter also trains a horse called High Grounds that was previously trained by David Dunne. Another Potter horse called Mistertommyshelby was previously trained in Ireland by Patrick Griffin. Griffin was the man that got All Class handicapped before it went on its winning spree with both David Dunne and Ronan McNally.

Coincidentally McNally owns and trains a horse of a similar name called Miss Polly Shelby (no relation to Mistertommyshelby). Two months ago McNally lodged an appeal with the IHRB in respect of this filly which had not been issued with an official handicap mark despite running seven times on the flat. The appeal was dismissed.

McNally, who splits his time between his aptly-named Krafty Kitchens and Bedrooms business and training horses, seems to get a great kick out of pulling off strokes and no doubt he has another ruse or two in the planning stages. Though, for the time being at least, his attention will be focussed on preparing his 2020 Troytown Chase winner The Jam Man for a tilt at the ultra-competitive Pertemps handicap hurdle final at the Cheltenham Festival and his imminent IHRB hearing over Dreal Deal.

Despite a quiet week on the domestic racing front we still saw significant movements in the Cheltenham Ante Post markets with Punchestown winners Dysart Dynamo and Bob Olinger shortening for their respective Festival targets.

Whatever about the merits of the unbeaten Dysart Dynamo’s wide-margin win in the Moscow Flyer Novice Hurdle the performance of Bob Olinger was somewhat tainted by the omission of three crucial fences in his Kildare Novice Chase victory. Last season’s Ballymore victor ran out a comfortable winner from the decent Capodanno at Punchestown but his jumping wasn’t really put to the test with low-lying sun continuing to be a scourge for winter racing.

We will hopefully get another chance to see Bob Olinger jump fences at next month’s Dublin Racing Festival before he heads back to Cheltenham, but the weather will once again play a major role.. Henry de Bromhead, like Willie Mullins two weeks ago, is worried about the condition of the Leopardstown surface and said: “The Dublin Racing Festival is the plan subject to ground - there would want to be a good ease.” A quick look at the ten day weather forecast for the Leopardstown area shows zero rain.