JP McManus celebrates his 75th birthday on Tuesday, aptly on the start of the Cheltenham Festival where much of his storied reputation as jump racing’s biggest owner has been written. McManus’s grip on the sport has never been tighter. Fifty years after buying his first racehorse, the billionaire businessman remains an incomparably dominant figure in National Hunt racing.
That first purchase was Cill Dara in 1976. She carried the famous green and gold hoops of McManus’s South Liberties GAA club in Limerick. Fifty years ago, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh resigned as president of Ireland. Gerald Ford was in the White House. In Ireland’s betting rings, tales of a punchy young bookmaker and punter labelled “The Sundance Kid” were already widespread.
It was another couple of years before those colours were seen at Cheltenham. It was 1982 before they were first successful there. They’ve subsequently been ubiquitous throughout the sport. In all, McManus has won 84 times on the week that matters most, including seven times in 2020. It’s just 4-1 that he’ll exceed that tally next week. Even by his own standards the game’s most famous gambler has a stronger hand of cards to play than ever before.
McManus does still gamble, even though financially he hardly needs to. Betting on currencies in the 1990s was the foundation of a business empire that pays for what is still by far the largest string of jump racehorses anywhere.
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In Ireland this season, and up to this week, 54 different horses have won races wearing McManus colours. There have been 160 different runners for a total of 43 different trainers. In Britain, 72 individual horses have run for 19 individual trainers and 32 of them have won races. Last season his horses ran nearly 1,000 times across the two countries, generating 151 victories. Take them out and a vast McManus-shaped hole is left in the sport.
The cream of that crop will line up next week. The New Lion is favourite for Tuesday’s Champion Hurdle. McManus is looking to win the race for a 10th time. Fact To File could join last year’s winner Inothewayurthinkin in Friday’s Gold Cup. The owner has won steeplechasing’s “Blue Riband” twice already. Majborough is favourite to supply a long-overdue first success in Wednesday’s Queen Mother Champion Chase.
Potential world-beating novices such as Mighty Park, and a squad of potential handicap “snips” will also feature in the 28 coveted races up for grabs over the four days.
They represent all the ways McManus invests; stock bought as youngsters, young talent snapped up in France or off the point-to-point fields in Ireland and distributed among a wide range of trainers. He breeds his own too. Then there’s his habit of buying the proven article and leaving them with their trainers, from powerhouse operations such The New Lion’s English handler Dan Skelton to Oscars Brother’s Cork trainer Connor King, who has just one other horse.
The scale of investment percolates into a vast number of stables and covers a broad spectrum of equine ability. It costs the same to train a moderate horse as a good one. One of the game’s puzzles is why a man whose wealth is counted in billions takes a famously hands-on approach to plotting mediocre horses in midweek gaffs. But he does, to an entire industry’s benefit.
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“When he’s gone there’ll be some hole in racing,” trainer and former RTÉ pundit Ted Walsh once said. “People won’t realise it until he’s gone.”
It’s a thought to cause sleepless nights throughout the sport. McManus’s reputation for beating the odds means wary bookies mightn’t offer extravagant odds about their former colleague getting another half-century out of horse ownership. But as is the way of things, and in the game’s self-serving way, attention turns to the future and jump racing’s own succession stakes.
McManus’s great friend and business partner, the Coolmore supremo John Magnier, turned 78 last month. Two of his sons, MV and JP, have been heavily involved for years in the massive global bloodstock empire built up by their father. Separately, what happens to the vast operation built up by the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed, after his passing is a sombre thought occupying plenty minds. Some of his children may continue his legacy but at what scale?
Such gloomy prognostications are inevitable but particularly discreet when it comes to McManus. His influence means even normally vocal figures clam up when it comes to anything but the most gushing public expressions of praise. Being inside the McManus tent is important to a lot of people. There’s a queue outside too, and a basic price of admission is loyalty and readiness to keep shtum. McManus likes publicity only of the most positive kind.
“There are a few models to point to. At Coolmore, clearly for the last 10 years there’s been a sort of succession plan in place. It was clear from an early stage that a couple of John Magnier’s children were as interested as he is,” says one industry insider who preferred not to be named.
“There have been other succession questions, like with Juddmonte. It turned out that two or three sons who’d been anonymous when Prince Khalid was alive suddenly turned out to be interested. The Aga Khan’s daughter has stepped readily into his shoes, although she doesn’t have the same financial clout. Sheikh Hamdan’s daughter is continuing, but at a more restricted level with lower numbers and less farms. Michael Smurfit’s son Tony is still there, but at a lower level too.”
Some point to McManus’s daughter, Sue Ann Foley, as perhaps the one of his three children with the most direct interest in racing. She owns Islanmore Stud in Croom, Co Limerick and has bred good horses such as Free Wind. She sold a yearling filly to Godolphin in October for 900,000 guineas (about €1.1 million). The filly’s dam, Potion, carried Foley’s recognisable black silks to victory on the racecourse.
Kieran McManus is a regular presence on the racecourse. Like his father, he’s known to like a bet, and a round of golf, and is a three-time winner at the Dunhill Links Championship. His success rate in gambling is, naturally, more private. Punting carried out by “Team McManus” carries a mystique that can define races from the highest level to the most lowly of handicaps. Trying to predict what’s fancied, or isn’t, can be a thankless task.
McManus’s eldest son, John, goes racing too and is described by some as a “chip off the old block” in terms of a sharp mathematical mind. He has reportedly built a successful career trading in antiques, sculpture and art. In 2021, his private life hit the headlines when his wife Emma died after becoming ill at the Sandy Lane resort in Barbados. The subsequent publicity, including claims she had taken cocaine before her sudden death, has been anathema to a family intensely aware of its public image.
Some predict it is Kieran McManus who’s the most likely to maintain his family’s racing connection in the long term. “It would be on a smaller scale, though, I’d say. There would be horses with the top guys like Mullins and Elliott. But the days of horses being in so many small yards around the country are unlikely,” said one observer.
All of it is the sort of augury that the patriarch of the family tends to regularly confound. Having recovered from being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2009, the man himself gives every sign of carrying out his own long-term planning.
English jockey Harry Cobden will assume the coveted role of his number one rider in Ireland and Britain when the new season starts in May. The move was announced in January, catching many off guard. It was a blow for Mark Walsh, who for years has seemed a natural fit for the job, being hugely professional, understated, and with a habit of never saying one word to the media where none would do. But Walsh will be 40 later this month. Cobden is 27.
It’s widely believed that Cobden’s appointment was pushed by AP McCoy. The record-breaking former champion jockey had been McManus’s number one for over a decade and is firmly part of the owner’s exclusive inner circle of advisers. Charlie Swan is another, as are former bookmaker Justin Carty and prominent owner Paul Byrne. Frank Berry has been a de facto racing manager for many years. For a tight-knit operation where loyalty counts for so much, Walsh’s demotion was a notable change of tack.
It does reflect the driving ambition to win that underpins all the apparent benevolence that reverberates throughout jump racing. McManus expects the best and is still more than ready to pay for it. A lot of people have a big stake in that continuing for a long time yet. Empires at their zenith might feel a creeping sense of anxiety, but this one mightn’t even yet be at its apex.
