Good old Barney
Fifteen days on from one of the boldest betting coups of recent seasons, Barney Curley was back on a racecourse yesterday, taking the sun outside the weighing room at Lingfield as he waited to saddle two runners on the card. "One day," he said, when asked about the four-horse gamble two weeks ago. "One day, I'll tell the story."
It should make for quite a tale, of the bets that were landed and, perhaps, the one that got away. It involved three horses from Curley's own stable and another, previously in his ownership, that had moved to join Chris Grant.
Three were winners, including the Grant-trained Jeu De Roseau, which completed the treble at 6-4 having been backed at 25-1 earlier in the day. Had all four gone in, the payout – so the bookies say – could have passed a million pounds.
As it was, many suggested a payout well into six figures, though Curley himself, of course, is not going to be drawn. "It wouldn't have changed my life," he says. And have all the bets been paid out? He pauses, choosing his words. "I am monitoring the situation."
Punter, trainer, owner, iconoclast: Curley has filled all of these roles during his 40-plus years on the turf, often all at once. There are only 12 horses in his stable now, well down from the 30 or more that were once funded almost entirely from betting, and the gambles are less frequent. But he still fascinates the punters, in particular when he makes a rare excursion to the track.
His two runners yesterday were both beaten, Sir Mozart after attracting significant support, Securitisation after drifting in the pre-race betting.
Curley described both as "iffers" beforehand, neither of which would be carrying any of his money, so unless he changed his mind it was his presence alone that persuaded the punters to get behind Sir Mozart.
The buzz of a gamble still has its appeal and Curley still enjoys his racing, though he worries about its future. "What the sport needs is for someone to take control, to be a leader," he says. "Instead, all you have is people who are always looking over their shoulders. Someone has to stand up and say: 'This is what will happen.'
"I'm not worried for my part, I've run my race, but I'm worried for the young people, the jockeys now who want to be trainers in 10 years or 20 years' time. We seem to miss opportunities all the time, like we did with Sea The Stars last season.
"People talk about Racing for Change, but we need to think about the people who are in racing already."
Bookmakers in general, and big bookies in particular, remain a source of immense frustration for Curley. He recalls that after the famous Yellow Sam coup in the mid-70s, said to have netted £300,000, some bookies decided to pay him out "in the big, green Irish pound notes of the time, and they were all screwed up into balls too, just out of badness". It took dozens of bags to shift it all, and he had to be careful about counting it, too, as there were rumours of an armed raid to get it back.
Today, the frustrations are different. The only loser in his four "coup" horses last week was sent off at 1-3, as the bookies tried to stem their losses. "That's why the system is wrong," he says. "You could have had whatever you like on at 7-4 and 6-4 on Betfair."
Curley has spent over a decade working on what may be the last great project of his life, Direct Aid For Africa, which has built a clinic and a school for 1,600 children in Zambia.
He has not visited Zambia since before Christmas – "I got ill the last time I went" – but hopes to be returning there soon. "I feel free when I'm there," he says. "You don't have people on your back the whole time like you do when you're racing."
