An Irishman's Diary

I WAS talking to a man recently who, from time to time over the years, has owned parts of a racehorse. Not the same horse – several different ones, none of them especially good. But the whole point of having a leg, or even an ear, of such an animal, he had initially assumed, was that on those rare occasions when the planets aligned to indicate an impending victory, the syndicate would be the first to hear about it.

Alas, it didn’t always work out like that. It was my companion’s bitter experience that the smaller racing stables do not consider intelligence about an upcoming win as something that must automatically be shared with such nosey-parkers as the winning owners.

Hence a race-meeting once when the syndicate members were keeping their hands in their pockets, as advised, only to see the horse’s odds plummet suspiciously, whereupon – amid a smell of treachery from the stable-yard – they had to suffer the indignity of following the money on their own nag.

So if mere owners are not always in the loop, one might wonder what chance racing’s lesser stake-holders, the casual punters, have of ending up on the right side of a social redistribution system that transfers wealth from the knowledge-poor to the rich.

And yet the attractions of equine intelligence-gathering – via third-hand rumours from the stable boy, or whoever – is for many of us irresistible. Because no amount of honestly-earned money is ever as enjoyable as the few quid you win off a bookmaker, especially when your bet was based on information that somebody somewhere may not have wanted you to know.

THE LURE of temporary or associate loop membership helps explain the popularity of an annual series of investment seminars, held from late February to mid-March in pubs and hotels across these islands, and now reaching a climax.

The so-called “Cheltenham preview nights” bring together various supposed experts – trainers, jockeys, bookies, professional tipsters, etc – on panels whose promise is to shed light on the mysteries of next week’s festival. And on Wednesday night last, I attended what was probably the biggest such event anywhere this year, when about 1,000 people packed Leopardstown Pavilion in Dublin, at €20 a head.

The money was for a good cause, of which more later. But the night’s primary business – dissemination of insider knowledge to the underprivileged – came via a panel of heavyweights including Irish champion trainer, Willie Mullins, jockey Davey Russell, and the famed English tipster Tom Segal: considered a prophet (even in his own country) by many punters.

The exchanges were impressively candid. In fact, if these nights have a fault for intelligence gatherers, it’s that the panel format encourages not just indiscretion but competitive levels of certainty from participants. Hence resounding declarations that such and such a horse “WILL win” – no terms or conditions – or by dismissive contrast, that another horse has a chance, “but only if it starts now”.

As the panel bookmaker, Boylesports’ Paudie Hassett, specialised in identifying runners he would happily oppose, or in bookie-speak, “lay”.

Such pastoral metaphors are a mainstay of racing circles. And in a memorably mixed one, Hassett dismissed Hurricane Fly’s rivals for the Champion Hurdle, promising he would “lay them till the cows come home”.

The least opinionated panellist, interestingly, was the trainer. Having about 25 per cent of Ireland’s known reserves of shrewdness, Willie Mullins does not give hostages to fortune. But then, he has more at stake than most, being responsible for maximising the chances of army of runners next week. This year, he may also have the added pressure of saddling that mythical Cheltenham phenomenon, the Irish “banker”.

Actually, he has two candidates for that title: the aforementioned Hurricane, and a horse called Boston Bob, provisionally entered for races on both Wednesday and Friday. Still protesting uncertainty as to which he event would pick, Mullins was mulling Boston Bob’s Wednesday chances, when given a mischievous tip by the bookmaker. “If money is anything to go by,” said Hassett, “you’ll be running him in the other race.”

SUCH QUESTIONS were put into stark perspective, however, by the secondary purpose of Wednesday’s event. This related in part to one of the evening’s conspicuous absentees: RTÉ presenter, Colm Murray, a racing fanatic who would normally have been there, and intended to be, until his cruel illness, Motor Neurone Disease, kept him away.

But it so happened that the night’s MC, his fellow RTÉ man Jimmy Magee, was himself intimately familiar with the disease. Four years ago, he saw his son Paul – a former professional footballer and all-round sportsman – die from it.

Now, the veteran broadcaster is patron of the Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association, the beneficiary of Wednesday’s fundraiser, and he spoke movingly about his family’s experiences. Although the Leopardstown crowd had grown restless by the start of his interval talk, Magee’s account of his son’s regression from full health to losing the use of his arms, legs, feet, hands, and voice within the space of 18 months quickly stilled the room.

Paul Magee was, by his father’s account, an incurable punter, who always disdained each-way bets, in favour of the win-only. Even on the last day of his life, via others, he had backed a horse “on the nose”. And although he didn’t live to see the race, his choice – like many others over the years – had finished second.

But a more fruitful investment – maybe – was that he had also by then arranged to donate his brain to science. It's now kept in Dublin's Beaumont Hospital, and the hope is that it may one day contribute to the search for a cure. In the meantime, Wednesday's event raised €26,000 for the cause. Anyone else who wants to help should log on to imnda.ie