Unforgettable Racing Gambles: Legends That Shook the Bookies Nothing quite manages to set the pulse going in the sport of racing than a traditional 'gamble'. The notion of beating the bookies is central to the hopes and aspirations of racing punters and seeing it done in style brings nourishment for the soul when it occurs. Every now and again, a gamble occurs that is so meticulously plotted that it goes down in racing folklore. Here are three prime examples in Irish racing. Barney Curley and Yellow Sam The original and the best. That could apply to the Yellow Sam coup at Bellewstown in 1975 or indeed to the late Barney Curley, the original bookie-basher. Curley was one of the sport's legendary figures in his lifetime. A gambler, a trainer, an owner and a hugely committed philanthropist. Back in the summer of 1975, Curley's good will was not extending to those in the bookmaking fraternity. He had run bookie shops in his time but, by this point, he was down on his luck and needed something out of the ordinary to turn things in his favour. Liam Brennan, who had horses for him on the Curragh, pinpointed Yellow Sam as a horse with potential to improve from his modest form in the book and Curley plotted the rest. He targeted an amateur riders' hurdle at Bellewstown, in which the modest quality of the opposition would be ideal. Ridden by leading amateur Michael Furlong, Yellow Sam won comfortably by two and a half lengths. Curley's team of punters, betting in stakes ranging from £50 to £300, managed to get a total of £15,300 on the horse at 300 locations off the course, all timed to go on just before the off at generous odds owing to the poor form exhibited by Yellow Sam. The crux came from Curley's outside the box thinking. It was the age of the phone box and Bellewstown only had one. The swathes of off-course money typically would have been phoned back to the on-course bookies to alert them, thus seeing the SP contracting. Curley arranged for Benny O'Hanlon, an associate and good talker, to occupy the sole phone box on the track 25 minutes before the race and stay there until the off, seemingly discussing the well-being of a non-existent aunt at a nearby hospital while bookmakers’ reps desperately urged him to finish his business and free the phone. He did, but only after the race had started, Yellow Sam obliged and Curley pocketed £306,000, which is the equivalent of over £2million in today's terms. As brilliant as it was bonkers, the simplicity of a bygone era facilitated Curley to pull of what remains Ireland's greatest betting coup. Byrnes and Russell light up Roscommon Trainer Charles Byrnes had a plan for Roscommon on a summers' evening in 2016 and he knew that he required a cool head to execute it. Davy Russell, three-time Irish champion over jumps and a serial winner at the Cheltenham Festival, was that cool head and his long association with the Byrnes team ensured his selection. The horses involved in the monster gamble were War Anthem, Mr Smith and Top of The Town, with prices that tumbled from odds of 16/1 and 14/1 down to SPs of 6/1, 7/4 and 5/4 respectively. The early morning odds offered a treble at odds of 4334/1, but in the final analysis it paid just 40/1. They won by three-and-a-quarter-lengths, four-and-a-quarter-lengths and five-lengths. There was hardly a moment of concern, save for Mr Smith being less than fluent three flights from home in his win. Their victories were alleged to have cost bookmakers in the region of €5million as the Limerick-based trainer pulled off the greatest modern coup in Irish racing. D Four Dave covers the nuptials Douglas Taylor is a former CEO of the super-profitable MCR Group, one of the country's biggest outsourcing companies. His hobbies included racing and he loved to tackle the bookies. Taylor went on to successfully breed Final Approach and Samcro, both Cheltenham Festival winners, but in the summer of 2010 he unleashed a meticulous gamble as D Four Dave won a three-mile handicap hurdle at Kilbeggan for trainer Conor O'Dwyer with Mark Walsh riding in Taylor's silks. The six-year-old had shown little in four maiden hurdles the previous season and was beaten more than 30-lengths in both recent starts. He had a rating of just 86 and connections clearly felt it was exploitable. He won by seven-lengths. It was to prove the only success of his career and he raced just four times afterwards. Taylor armed 200 MCR staff with a €200 stake and a watch with the alarm set for five minutes before the race at Kilbeggan. Their instructions were simple, to place the bets on D Four Dave when their alarms went off. They all had a specific shop to target and, with the bets going on in unison, and the horse generally trading at 14/1, they all got the value before the bookies cut the odds to an SP of 5/1. It was said to land a six-figure sum for Taylor, who insists the meticulous plot was for fun, though he made the error of telling a journalist it was paying for his impending wedding. "I made the mistake of telling a journalist at the time that I was getting married and it would pay for the wedding," he later told the Racing Post. "I ended up being tormented by all the tabloids - journalists were ringing from Australia. The gamble was really for the fun of it, not the money."
