Horse Racing Owner Profiles

[Old Vic]

An old Graham Wylie interview from about 10 years ago

Keep on top of everything Saturday interview Graham Wylie The founder of Sage shares words of wisdom about good health, good luck and a very tidy office with Mark Smith

GRAHAM Wylie, the Geordie playboy of Scots parentage who co-founded the accounting software giant Sage, believes he owes his success - and his multi-millions - to a combination of luck, marketing and an obsession with keeping his desk tidy.

Sitting in a near-empty ground floor meeting room of one of his latest acquisitions, ISI Systems, in Hamilton, Wylie - a normally calm entrepreneur and gifted computer programmer - sweeps his hand across the sparsely furnished open space, which contains little more than an empty table, a few chairs and couple of folders stacked in the corner. ''To tell the truth, even this room is too messy for me,'' he says, becoming momentarily animated. ''I do believe in a clean desk and a clean office. I can't stand to see a stack of papers. ''Whenever anything comes in, it's dealt with right away. What that means is that I'm on top of everything and whatever is in front of me gets priority.'' Short, looking slightly overweight in a dull suit, and apparently lacking in the characteristic dynamism expected from an entrepreneur estimated to be worth around £ 200m, Wylie - once he gets over the tidiness thing - returns to exuding an air of Zen-like calm. Nonetheless, at 45 years old, Wylie hasn't read much Zen. In fact, he confesses to have not read much at all, beyond the racing columns of newspapers and Tattersall's bloodstock auction book while deciding what his next thoroughbred purchase might be - his latest passion. After stepping down last year from Sage's board and pocketing around £ 123m from the sale of a roughly 5.5% stake in the company, the entrepreneur admits his life is not exactly filled to the brim with work and stress. These days, he prefers shopping and fun - and he can afford both in whatever large doses he happens to feel like. During the past few months, Wylie, the son of a coal miner, has bought himself six new companies to bolt on to his latest venture, Technology Services Group, an IT services network aimed at the SME market, including two in Scotland. He also bought himself an 18th-century mansion for an undisclosed seven-figure sum and 49 racehorses - although he describes himself as ''not much of a gambler - usually no more than a £ 20 bet''. Last year, he married Andrea, his second wife, and had former Boyzone pop star Ronan Keating turn up as a surprise singing guest at the wedding. He is also the father of two teenage boys from a previous marriage. As part of his latest passion - and his business prowess - Wylie is sponsoring this year's Ayr Gold Cup, the feature race of the final day at the annual Western Meeting at Ayr Racecource today. ''I've just been lucky,'' he insists, almost apologetically. Yet beyond the luck, the belief in blanket branding and office tidiness, Wylie is a shining example of what can be achieved by being in the right place at the right time. He graduated from Newcastle University in 1980 with a degree in computer science and statistics, at a time when computers had no monitors and were shrinking from the size of bedrooms to the size of small boxes that fit on top of desks. It was the epoch of the birth of personal computing. Even a cursory glance through the bones of Wylie's story reveals just how brightly lady luck has shone on this man's life. Above all, Wylie is lucky to be alive. He also insists that his calm has nothing to do with the fact that four years ago he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and that he promised himself to ''spend more time with my family and friends''. ''When you think you're about to die, it puts everything into perspective,'' he says. ''I'm completely clear now, but still you make sure your priorities are set correctly. It was a very scary time. ''But as for calm, I've always been like this.'' Both luck and calm have stayed with him - except perhaps when it comes to this tidiness thing. Wylie's father came from Stirling and his mother was from Hawick, in the Borders. The pair travelled first to Nottingham for work and eventually settled in the Newcastle area, where his father got a job in the booming 1950s coal-mining industry of the north-east. He describes his childhood as ''normal'' and said there was no pressure on him to be ''anything except happy''. As a high school student, too small for his age, in the 1970s, Wylie was supposed to play rugby - but managed instead to get himself into a fledgling computer class. ''Well, I'm not exactly the biggest chap,'' He says. ''And I had a choice of being kicked about and trounced on a sodden rainy playing field by players twice my size or go into a nice dry room and play with computers. ''I was lucky, because somehow I found I had an aptitude for computers.'' Wylie wrote the first piece of software for Sage while still a student at Newcastle University. A small accounting firm hired him for a summer job with a meagre government grant intended to aid businesses to take advantage of emerging technologies. He wrote a piece of software to help the company with its records, a programme now called Sage line 50, which later became the first version of Sage Accounts. He was later hired by David Goldman, a Sunderland entrepreneur with a local printing and graphics company, who used Wylie's software to estimate the price of print jobs. Goldman was so impressed, he joined with Wylie the next year to form Sage, which initially marketed its software to print companies but soon expanded. The pair grew weary of travelling up and down A1 in a Chrysler Alpine and soon established a network of resellers they could support by phone. In 1984, they made the critical decision to seek investment from venture capitalists to help them win a contract to add their software to the Sinclair QL, one of the first attempts at mass-market PCs in the UK. They didn't win the contract, but they did gain expertise and a plan to grow. ''In the early days, we spent something like 40% of our budget on marketing,'' Wylie said. ''We realised very early on that if Sage was going to succeed a key factor would be how much we got our name out there. And we wanted the name to be everywhere.'' The following year, however, the company got its software on to the Amstrad wave, allowing Sage to market its software to the growing army of home computer users. Some 21 years after writing that first programme, Wylie sold the bulk of his shares in Sage, which at the time had a valuation of around £ 3bn and was the only technology stock in the FTSE-100. Aside from his love of horse racing, Wylie's belief in the importance of marketing has also been instrumental in his sponsorship of today's Ayr Gold Cup. ''We've invested about £ 100,000 in sponsoring the race and all he associated hospitality,'' said Wylie. ''It's a way for us to say thank you to existing customers and hello to new customers.'' He had also planned on one of own horses running in the two-year-old handicap race today - and so far, of the 49 racehorses he bought earlier this year, 28 have already won races. However, the ground has gone against him and the horse will not run. Which only goes to show that Wylie's luck isn't always guaranteed. wylie's way Best moment: Watching my horse Arcalis win the John Smith's Cup. It was my first win. My children and wife will probably kill me for saying that.
Worst moment: When I was diag-nosed with testicular cancer four years ago.

What drives you: Seeing an idea and making it happen. What do you drive: A Porche Cayenne 4x4.

Favourite book: Tattersall's bloodstock horse auction book.

Favourite music: Ronan Keating, because he turned up at my wedding.

Secrets of success: I surround myself with good people that I can trust and I always keep a clean desk.

[Statto]

John Ferguson / Bloomfields article 2nd in Owners table behind JP

http://www.ownerbreeder.co.uk/2013/10/a-man-of-many-parts/

A man of many parts
Bloodstock advisor, company chairman, racehorse trainer… it’s a good job John Ferguson has boundless energy
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Alan Lee

John Ferguson swings his jeep through the electric gates and pulls up next to a small barn. Just 11 horses are inside, all unraced, and Ferguson gazes wonderingly at each in turn. “I can come up here and dream any time I want,” he says.

Most of us, reading that paragraph, would assume it is expensive yearlings beguiling the man known chiefly as Sheikh Mohammed’s bloodstock advisor. But no, very different thoroughbreds occupy Kings Yard at Ferguson’s Bloomfields property.


A hands-on approach from trainer John Ferguson
These are stoutly-bred National Hunt horses that may not see a racecourse until they are five years old. Ferguson is in no hurry. He is a patient man, as well as a compellingly positive one. “Tomorrow is always more exciting than yesterday,” is a favourite mantra. It is one he has needed to invoke many times of late.

At 53, Ferguson leads a double life. No, make that a treble life. Darley is the day job and he oversees it with unswerving pride. Less well known is his chairmanship of a company named Falcon, created when Dubai briefly hit the financial buffers and existing to promote the country and support its ruler.

His other life is here at Bloomfields, a few miles out of Newmarket but a million miles from its hectic roads and regimented gallops. Here, on a stunningly rural site he expanded beyond 100 acres by buying fields from adjacent farms, Ferguson is indulging his ambition to train jumpers. He started “with no plan at all” but, three years in, this is a serious National Hunt operation.

Ferguson has 48 horses, two-thirds of them off the Flat. They are trained on a six-furlong woodchip gallop, winding up an avenue of trees that might easily be in Chantilly, and a half-mile gallop of deep and testing sand. Between times, they are subjected to as intensive a schooling regime as I have seen anywhere, much of it done loose around a large sand ring.

“I’ve a feeling I school horses more often than most but jumping, surely, is everything,” Ferguson says. “They have to want to do it.

“Training is my fun. I can pretend it’s a business but it’s not, though these things are fun only if they’re done well – we have always been ambitious.”

But while knowing he is blessed to be able to dismiss the financial imperatives of most National Hunt trainers, Ferguson cares deeply about methods and results.

Training is my fun. I can pretend it’s a business but it’s not, though these things are fun only if they’re done well

In his first season with a licence, he trained 24 winners and had a runner-up at the Cheltenham Festival. His second term brought one fewer winner but much more prize-money. His third has already enjoyed a fruitful summer.

In truth, training jumpers may also have been a welcome haven during these troubling months for anyone close to Sheikh Mohammed. Few are closer than Ferguson and he could hardly be untouched by the springtime scandal, which saw Mahmood Al Zarooni summarily banished from Moulton Paddocks for administering anabolic steroids.

“It’s been a nightmare,” he says candidly. “In the fantastically successful racing lifetime of Sheikh Mohammed, it’s unquestionably the greatest disappointment both for him and the team. One man made a massive error and will forever pay the price. He has to live with that. It might have been done from a desire to win but it’s called cheating.”

As part of the rarefied inner circle, Ferguson saw the effect it had on his boss, the ruminative silences to which it reduced him. Al Zarooni was very much the sheikh’s project and he had to come to terms with what happened.

“He knew the guy well, his trust was broken and that’s obviously extremely hard to cope with,” he says. “But I never feared that everything would change.


John Fergsuon’s horses run in the name of his home, Bloomfields
“This is a man who lives for challenges. When everything is going wonderfully well, he’s almost bored. Of course I’m not suggesting he remotely enjoyed all this but it has reinvigorated him to get it right. It was an Emirati who let him down and that hurt. But many thousands of Emiratis are wonderful people and they don’t deserve to be tarred with the same brush. Sheikh Mohammed will do all he can to promote them – it didn’t work this time but he won’t give up.

“You don’t build Dubai by walking away after one guy disappoints you. Failure is not getting up again. If ever there was a man who is not afraid of failure, it’s the boss.”

Naturally, Ferguson has a lot for which he must be grateful to the sheikh, yet the reverse also applies. At least until this year, the racing and bloodstock empire of Sheikh Mohammed seemed bywords for efficiency and productivity, and much of that was down to the organisational skills and boundless energy of Ferguson.

Such virtues came from each of his parents, who now live barely two miles away and follow his new career avidly. “My father commanded the Scots Guards, in which I also did three years’ service,” he says. “My military background demands structure. As for energy, my mother is a walking dynamo and I think it’s probably genetic. But, frankly, it’s so easy to have energy if you love what you’re doing.”

This is palpably true of Ferguson, whose enthusiasm for life is reflected in output. Somehow he contrives to conduct three jobs, any one of which would be enough for most mortals. Darley employs 1,000 people and Falcon has 40 Dubai-based staff. How Ferguson finds time to train is a wonder, yet he explains it all very simply, saying: “Darley is still my main focus. It’s my responsibility to make sure the ship sails in the right direction but I have a lot of very good people there now. If I was still having to travel as much as I used to, I’d have created the wrong team.

“Darley had to take a step back during the financial crisis, as it wouldn’t have been right for Sheikh Mohammed to be seen to be spending millions on yearlings when the rest of Dubai was struggling. At that time, in 2009, I created a strategic communications company that explains to the world what the boss and Dubai is all about, through events, conferences, magazines and other outlets.

“I’m chairman of Falcon but I have a brilliant MD who runs it on a day-to-day basis. One of the best things Sheikh Mohammed has taught me is delegation. I will regularly fly out on a Saturday night, work through Sunday in Dubai and then catch the 2am flight back. I’m out with second lot and the staff hardly know I’ve been away.”

If it all sounds exhausting, Ferguson seems as immune to fatigue as he is to bad moods. Dawn has barely broken as first lot pulls out at Bloomfields and the trainer, despite bringing a chesty cold back from Dubai the previous day, is in sparkling humour. “I’m not a worrier and I’m not a shouter,” he says reflectively.

“I remember the last time I shouted at one of the kids. It was eight years ago and I spent six months regretting it.”

He has three children – James, a university graduate now working for Sir Mark Prescott, Georgina, employed in the London fashion industry, and teenager Alex, who has recently ridden his first winners on the Flat.

Bloomfields, named after the house he bought from fellow bloodstock agent David Minton almost 20 years ago, is now the registered owner of all the horses he trains. “There were too many Fergusons on the page,” he explains. “It felt like me, me, me. This has a better ring to it, a team feel.”

The idea of training gripped Ferguson on his 50th birthday, when he was out walking with the dog. “I’d always thought I would run a stud farm here if Sheikh Mohammed sacked me,” he says. “Then I realised that training would be much more fun.”

He went to his employer for approval and received it so unreservedly that most of the early horses in his care were sent by him.

Ferguson continues: “It was going to be only a few of our own pointers at first. Then the boss said I should try with a couple of his Flat horses – one of which was Cotton Mill. It went well, so he sent a few more. We have a bias of Flat horses literally through the kindness of Sheikh Mohammed, but I’ve now bought some stores to balance it. If you’re going to do this, you might as well try to win the big chases and we’re not going to do that with most of these Flat horses.”

He has 48 boxes spread across three yards. The two outer yards are called Kings and Mulligans.

“Politically correct,” he says mischievously. “King was my wife Fiona’s maiden name and Mulligan was my mother’s. We have enough boxes now to do things the way I want. I have no intention of getting any bigger or training for other people – to accommodate that I’d have to change my lifestyle.”

Ferguson is aware he was initially regarded with suspicion and apprehension by the jumps community.

“There was a lot of chat, a lot of rumour, a lot of speculation that this was Sheikh Mohammed trying to take over jumps racing,” he says. “The biggest single factor for me was when I went to the Derby Sale in Ireland in my first year. I could feel the eyes on me, the apprehension – but then I was outbid at €3,500 for a Beneficial gelding and everyone realised it was only me. From then on, trainers back here knew there was no hidden agenda.”

Not that jumping was alien to him. “It was in the blood,” he confirms. “My mother is very Irish and it was natural to love jumping. I worked for Nick Gaselee and led up in the Grand National when I was 17. I’ll never forget that. When I arrived back in the game I didn’t know how I would be received, but everyone has been very friendly.”

[Statto]

It is a reaction Ferguson inspires through his openness and enthusiasm. His staff is led by James Owen, a champion point-to-point rider and capable assistant, and Charlotte Morrell, “who came here 15 years ago to look after three ponies and two hunters”.

Work riders include the recently retired Alex Merriam and Denis O’Regan, recruited as stable jockey “because you need the equivalent of a Champions League striker if you are going to compete at the top level.”

That, assuredly, is where he aims to be. This year, it will be with Flat converts such as Cotton Mill, New Year’s Eve, Ruacana, Sea Lord and “my secret weapon” Dubai Prince. In the future, he hopes, it will be with the store horses he is nurturing in Kings yard.

Already, he has competed hard at two Cheltenham festivals. “We hit the crossbar in our first year,” he recalls. “New Year’s Eve finishing second to Champagne Fever was a huge moment – so too, in a different way, was Cotton Mill running out through the wing at the second last in the Neptune. I don’t sit and watch that back, it’s just too painful.

“Last season we took a house near the track for the first time and lived in the atmosphere for four days. We had the Fred Winter favourite in Bordoni but he cracked a knee in the race. That’s the way it goes. Cheltenham is not supposed to be easy.”

Sheikh Mohammed has not appeared alongside Ferguson at Cheltenham, or at any other jumps fixtures, but that does not mean he takes no interest. “He comes here to watch schooling occasionally and he will follow that horse running at Sedgefield or Hexham, especially if he’s seen the jockey fall off the day before,” Ferguson says. “He loves horses and he never regarded me as a trainer, so the idea amuses him.”

Clearly, though, Ferguson’s training career is no joke. He means business.

[Old Vic]

Michael oflynn ..owns the rock horses

CORK developer Michael O'Flynn has defended his ongoing involvement in horse racing against claims that it is inappropriate given his status as the head of one of Nama's top ten most indebted borrowers.

The decision by the chairman and managing director of O'Flynn Construction to bring several of his racehorses, including Elysian Rock and Shane Rock, to compete in last week's Christmas racing festival at Leopardstown took many in the industry by surprise, given the public outcry that followed a recent RTE Prime Time investigation into the lifestyles of Ireland's biggest developers, including Mr O'Flynn.

In the course of the programme, the Cork developer was secretly filmed travelling by helicopter to a race meeting at Downroyal to see one of his horses, China Rock, compete.

Asked by the Sunday Independent if he believed his ownership of racehorses was still appropriate in view of recent remarks by Nama chairman Frank Daly that developers would have to curb their lifestyles and have to sell off their "jets, their yachts, their Bentleys or whatever", Mr O'Flynn said in a statement that he was "proud" of his personal ongoing involvement in the horse racing industry.

"My family and I, like many other people from all walks of life, have been supporters of the horse racing industry for many years and I am proud of my personal ongoing involvement in what is a very important industry in Ireland," he said.

The Cork-based developer added that as he had always operated a "strict policy of not providing personal guarantees for any borrowings associated with the O'Flynn Group", his personal affairs were not linked with those of the O'Flynn Group. He also stressed that his companies' borrowings had only been transferred to Nama as this was required under legislation.

Mr O'Flynn pointed out that there had been no reduction in the amount the O'Flynn group of companies owed on those development loans since their transfer on to the books of the State agency. He said that he looked forward to engaging with Nama on his companies' business plans in early 2011.

But while Mr O'Flynn remains adamant that his continuing involvement in the so-called sport of kings is appropriate in the Nama era, others are not so sure.

Approached by the Sunday Independent in the parade ring at Leopardstown last Tuesday and asked for his views on Mr O'Flynn's presence and his horses' participation at the race meeting, Fine Gael TD Sean Barrett said: "I don't understand the situation to be honest with you. I mean the only man who can answer that question for you is himself [Michael O'Flynn]. I don't know what his personal or other circumstances are. I saw the Prime Time programme [on the developers]."

Asked for his views on that programme, Mr Barrett said: "I was appalled actually. The idea that the ordinary members of the public are making such sacrifices in terms of deductions from their salaries, and they see this sort of carry on, people [developers] openly being excessive." Referring specifically to the footage shown on Mr O'Flynn in the same broadcast, he continued: "Going to a race meeting in a helicopter at a time when we're all asked to pull in our horns, I don't think it's the wisest thing to be doing," Mr Barrett added.

O'Flynn all over news in Ireland lately. At war with one of big US funds.

[Sprinter]

I see Sprinter Sacre owner Raymond Mould has had a change of heart about retirement

In 2013

Raymond Mould has retired as chairman of a London-based property group to focus his efforts on horse racing.

Raymond, who lives at Wormington Manor, near Broadway in the Cotswolds, hopes to spend more time on the sport he loves – starting with the Cheltenham Festival next month.

The 72-year-old has stepped down as chairman of property group London & Stamford, which merged with retail property landlord Metric Property Investments to form LondonMetric Property.

He remains a shareholder in the business, but is now looking forward to the Festival, which he will watch for the last time from his corporate box of 20 years and which will host 50 people a day.

Equine superstar Sprinter Sacre, owned by his wife Caroline, is the finest horse in training and odds on favourite to win the Queen Mother Champion Chase on Ladies' Day.

"He just rises to the occasion. He loves showing off. We are very hopeful," said Raymond.

The pair will later host a party at their home, as they have for several years.

Raymond has lived in the Cotswolds since 1985 and Wormington for eight years.

He is one of four partners – along with leading trainer Nigel Twiston-Davies – of The Hollow Bottom pub in Guiting Power, in the Cotswolds.

He also has one of his horses, six-year-old Ransom Note, trained by Nigel.

As the former chairman of Arena Leisure, which owns racecourses across the country, he has a fondness for Jockey Club Racecourses-owned Cheltenham and other major venues and was not too upset with the recent closures of Folkestone and Hereford.

"My view is there are too many racecourses. You have to find the horses for them and it spreads the prize money. I wouldn't mind a few more going," he said.

But he added smaller, privately run tracks were also positive for the sport, including Ludlow in Shropshire.

Raymond, who previously lived in Idbury, near Bourton-on-the-Water started his career as a solicitor with a focus on tax. He set up his own firm and found many of his clients were tied up in property.

After discussing with his then business partner and friend Patrick Vaughan their next move, they decided because of the knowledge they had gained, to move into property investment. They went on to found and float two more companies. Patrick is now executive chairman of LondonMetric Property.

Last month at www.ft.com

July 29, 2014 12:26 pm
Raymond Mould returns to build portfolio of UK rented homes

By Kate Allen

Veteran property entrepreneur Raymond Mould is to launch a company that will invest in privately rented homes, his first step back into the market since he sold his previous company, London & Stamford.

L&S merged with retail landlord Metric Property Investments in 2012, after which Mr Mould left the combined group LondonMetric Property plc.

Mr Mould has a long record in the property industry, first at developer Arlington, which he founded in 1976 and sold to British Aerospace in 1989, and then at Pillar, which he established in 1991 and ran until 2005 when it was bought by British Land.

His latest venture, Newtree Capital, will start with a £40m deal with developer Galliard Homes. The companies will jointly acquire 114 homes in Eltham, southeast London.

London house prices have surged in the past couple of years, up 20 per cent in the year to May, according to the Office for National Statistics. Despite this, Mr Mould said “good opportunities continue to exist in the private rented sector, notably outside the prime core areas of central London”.

[mayo]

Hedge funds and investment solutions may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for these guys buying stock with huge potential is their bread and butter. It’s no surprise then to see their partnership flourishing with this winter likely to be their most successful to date.

Munir has owned horses with Nicky Henderson for several years with a great deal of success.

Soldatino got the show on the road in 2010 when winning the Triumph Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. A year later Grandouet had the owner dreaming of future Champion Hurdle victories, though sadly he has never quite reached those heights.

But it’s the Munir-Souede partnership that looks set to take such achievements to a new level.

The team certainly has a mighty set of youngsters who could dominate the Triumph Hurdle in March.

Peace And Co, trained by Henderson, won Doncaster’s Grade Two Juvenile Hurdle with consummate ease last month.

Then at Chepstow after Christmas, Bristol De Mai produced a stunning performance to take the Finale Hurdle, beating a quality field which included Alan King’s top juvenile Karezak.

On Monday at Newbury we had the latest three-year-old from France to burst onto the scene, when the aptly named Top Notch gave lumps of weight and a beating to a decent type from Harry Fry’s yard, Mick Jazz.

This latest ‘flying machine in green’ – like Munir and Souede’s L’Ami Serge who may run at Sandown tomorrow – is also trained in Lambourn by Henderson.

Vyta Du Roc was another running for Munir and Souede at Newbury. He was just edged out in the Grade One Challow Hurdle and could be a serious contender for the Neptune Novices’ Hurdle at the Festival.

The partnership also have two potential stars in Ireland – Gitane Du Berlais with Willie Mullins and Vercingetorix with Gordon Elliott.

Munir and Souede are clearly making their presence felt in the market place and you feel this is a partnership that is going places.

They are capable of competing aggressively with Gigginstown Stud, the Riccis and the Brookhouses of the sport. Time will tell if their financial expertise is an aid to future success.

Certainly the signs so far this winter are positive as their French purchases have put them in pole position for Cheltenham and Aintree this spring.

[Old Vic]

Barney Curley 1/2

How the perfectly legal heists of a racehorse-trainer and former seminarian made him the bane of the bookies

INDUS VALLEY is an unremarkable horse, or so punters thought when it ran in the 4.25 at Kempton Park, a racetrack on the outskirts of London, on January 22nd 2014. Given that it had been beaten by an aggregate of 104 lengths in its previous four outings—and had not competed at all for two years—odds of 25-to-1 seemed generous. Indus Valley won. Two earlier, minor races at other English tracks that Wednesday had featured unlikely comebacks by mounts that had been out of action for months. The 6.25 at Kempton Park delivered a final surprise. Low Key—an aptly named horse given its lack of pedigree, more so since it was running its first race since being castrated—finished well ahead of the pack. Obscure midwinter horse-racing is often unpredictable; still, what were the odds of four horses who had not won a race between them since 2010 all triumphing on the same day?

The answer, as bookmakers soon discovered, was 9,000-to-1. Wagering just £112 ($184) on all four was enough to yield £1m. And thousands of pounds had indeed been wagered on two, three or all four no-hopers. Even before Low Key romped home with a length to spare, the writing was on the wall: the bookies had been hustled. And it wasn’t hard to guess the culprit: Barney Curley, a 75-year-old Northern Irishman, former aspiring Jesuit priest, low-grade horse trainer and professional gambler, had once owned three of the four winners. Their current trainers were former employees of his Newmarket yard or otherwise associated with him. Betting on horses blessed with a sudden improvement in form was as much a Curley trademark as the beige fedora on his bald pate.

Bookies denounced a “weapons-grade coup”. One, Paddy Power, said it had lost nearly £1m; pundits speculated about losses of £15m for the industry overall, though the true figure was probably nearer £2m (bookmakers exaggerate such hits to play up punters’ chances). Yet as in previous Curley plots—and there have been four decades’ worth of them—none found a reason not to pay up. Part of the ingenuity of the schemes, part of the chutzpah, is the way they mix subterfuge with respect for the letter of the law. This was a heist, but a perfectly legal one.

Play it again, Sam

When it comes to landing wagers on unlikely horses, Mr Curley has form (“Schemes, coups, call them what you like,” he says, amused by the mystique that surrounds him). The template is simple. A horse with proven ability is purchased, often from overseas. It disappears for months or years, perhaps recovering from injury. When it finally competes, its performance is appalling. Because, in most low-quality races, faster horses are given additional weight to “handicap” them, losing badly can help a horse in future events by lowering its rating. On its next outing, the bookmakers (having never heard of the obscure horse) lure punters with prices of 20-to-1 or higher. Lo and behold, the nag rediscovers its form, beats a field of weighted-down stragglers and enriches its backers—ie, Mr Curley.

His first notable caper was in 1975, at Bellewstown, an Irish track more noted for its lovely setting than the quality of its racing. Mr Curley’s horse, Yellow Sam, had not finished above eighth in two years; it was carrying 10kg less than some of its rivals. Yellow Sam’s performance, however, was not Mr Curley’s only concern, or even his main one. The real worry was the odds.

The trouble with odds is that they fluctuate. Bookies adjust them according to the betting: lots of money placed on a horse will result in worse odds for the punter. Prices for horses swing like those of shares on a stockmarket. Betting shops will refuse to take a wager altogether if they get wind of a “coup”, and even in 1975 they already knew enough about Mr Curley to be wary.

He crafted a double-pronged strategy to befuddle them. A steady trickle of bets is harder to identify, and therefore counter, than a whopping IR£15,300 ($31,300) wager—the total amount Mr Curley put on Yellow Sam. So the first prong consisted of spreading his bets thinly, by having associates place them in hundreds of betting shops around Ireland rather than with the “turf accountants” at the track. That required serious organisation: dozens of “putters-on” from Bantry to Skibbereen and Ballymena, each placing IR£50 or IR£100 at around 150 betting shops in total, all within a few minutes of the race starting. “It was like a general massing his troops before battle,” Mr Curley recalled in his autobiography; “maybe a better analogy was a bank robbery.” A single loose lip would be enough to spoil the odds and foil the plot.

There was another risk to the odds, and thus to the operation. The prices used to calculate the winnings were those set by the trackside turf accountants when the race began. To prevent Yellow Sam drifting in from his original, lucrative odds of 20-to-1, it was vital that no word of the sums staked on him reached the course.

Thus the second prong of the ploy. Bellewstown had been picked not for its scenic appeal but for its antiquated communications: in 1975 a single public phone connected it to the outside world. A Curley man, Benny O’Hanlon—described by Mr Curley as “a balding, heavily built kind of fellow, a tough sort that you wouldn’t want to get into an argument with”—occupied the phone line in the crucial run-up to the race. The effect of holding off the trackside bookies for 25 minutes, with a rococo yarn about reaching a dying aunt in an invented hospital, was to short-circuit their prices. By the time he hung up, the horses were running, and the bookmakers could only watch in despair as Yellow Sam won by 2½ lengths.

A few betting shops prevaricated when it came to paying out the IR£306,000 winnings, worth £2.3m today and said to be a record at the time. Some settled in single punt notes to convey their displeasure. They were well attuned to skulduggery in racing, notably the risk of “ringers”, whereby a champion horse is run under the guise of an inferior one. But there was nothing illegal about the scheme. As for its mastermind: it helped Mr Curley recover from a bad run of bets, but that was almost an afterthought. Wealth is unimportant to him, he says in his gentle County Fermanagh brogue (rather less gentle in his famous trackside outbursts): it is worth much less than the satisfaction of gouging the bookmakers, a breed he holds in the lowest possible esteem. They bleed the sport of money, he argues; but the animosity has a personal tinge, too. “A small part of me”, his autobiography confides, “regarded the success of the scheme as some kind of retribution for what had happened to my father twenty years before.”

Charlie Curley, Barney’s father, had made good through a reputable grocer’s business and a less reputable knack for smuggling goods between Northern Ireland (where the family lived) and the Republic. It took a decade of betting on greyhounds to fritter away a modest fortune and then some. By 1956 he needed a big win to repay his debts. A last-ditch gamble involved a dog that had previously been “stopped” (made to run badly to lengthen its subsequent odds). Far from winning, the hound slipped and died mid-race, leaving the Curleys broke. At age 16 Barney was yanked from boarding school to help his father raise money. Like millions of penurious Irishmen before them, they crossed the Irish Sea to find work, winding up in Urmston, in Manchester’s industrial shadow.

Earning £20 a day each, it took the two Curleys a year of double shifts in a plastics factory to pay off the family’s debt. The time of sacrifice inspired Barney to become a priest upon his return to Ireland; he enlisted at a seminary in the hope of joining the Jesuits. He recalls those “halcyon days”, despite—or perhaps because of—the deprivations his training entailed. Ironically it was in the seminary that he was introduced to horse-racing, joining friends at outings to Limerick Junction racecourse. It wasn’t the horses that drew him from the church, however, but a bout of tuberculosis at the age of 22, which kept him at home for a year. He never returned to the seminary, though he still attends mass every day.

A motley string of occupations followed: smuggling razorblades and tyres across the north-south border; an insurance business in London (selling car insurance with no expectation of paying out claims); a perennially unprofitable pub in Omagh; pig farming. For a while Mr Curley’s most stable career was as a pop impresario, promoting bands in the wake of Beatlemania. One of his acts, Frankie McBride and the Polka Dots, cracked the British Top 20 chart in 1967. Handily, the jobs left a fair bit of time for betting—even, during one spell, for working as a bookie. He met his wife Maureen in 1968 at the track at Killarney (his account of their first encounter notes in detail the names and fortunes of the horses he backed).

Training and betting on horses became his life’s work. New tricks were developed to foil the bookies; most refused to take his bets. No matter, putters-on could always be found to cover his tracks. One ambitious scheme involved paying a British Telecom engineer he had befriended in a pub to knock out phone lines to the racetrack in Thirsk—a £1,000 investment that helped secure £80,000 in winnings on a 14-to-1 shot.

[Old Vic]

By 1978 Mr Curley was worth IR£1.2m, according to court documents. In the early 1980s, after the Yellow Sam coup had made it near-impossible for him to bet in Ireland, he moved to Newmarket, a market town 60 miles north of London dominated by the horsetrack on its western edge. This was the golden age of racing, then the only sport on which gambling was allowed bar the football pools. Two of Britain’s four television channels broadcast races live. Mr Curley owned over 50 horses, some good enough to run in high-end meetings such as Ascot and Cheltenham. Even so, turning a profit from racing itself was tough. Making any sort of money meant betting, on the right horses at just the right time.

Brought to book

Mr Curley is respected as a trainer, albeit one whose success has mostly been at the lower end of the sport. “Curley has long been a master of extracting the maximum from the moderate—when the money was down,” says Nick Townsend, author of “The Sure Thing”, a book that details Mr Curley’s betting prowess. Yet repeated run-ins with the authorities stymied any hopes of joining racing’s establishment, which embraces Arab sheikhs and the queen.

Most sports have rules against participants wagering on their own contests. The idea of a football manager backing his team in some games but not others is far-fetched. Horse-racing is different: it is not so much a sport as an enterprise devised to give punters something to gamble on. In Britain, at all but the top, the prize money has long been insufficient to pay for the upkeep even of reasonably successful horses. Owners foot the bills on the promise of a fun day at the track, partly spent betting on their horses.

All the same, there are limits. Trainers and jockeys categorically must not bet against their own mounts. They must make every attempt to win every race they enter. Jockeys and their employers must “run a horse on its merits” or face the wrath of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA).

“Running a horse on its merits” and trying to win races are subtly different things, however. A mount best suited to a long, flat race can legitimately be entered for a short hurdle event, where it will struggle in the way Usain Bolt might in a marathon. An injured horse may well run on its merits but still end up dead last, so looking like a dud to bookies and handicappers. Only the trainer will know how well-suited a horse is to the conditions; whether it is race-fit; if it has improved since its last public outing. Using that inside information is firmly within the rules.

“Stopping a horse, laying a horse [betting against it and losing on purpose]: that to me is stealing,” Mr Curley says. But that is not the same as sincerely hoping a horse will win every time: “I have never made any secret of running the horses to suit me, not the people in betting shops.” On any given day, only he knows whether he is backing one of his horses.

Actually the BHA did once find him guilty of stopping a horse. In 2007 they concluded there had been a “deliberate attempt to conceal the true ability” of one of his mounts, Zabeel Palace, which was defeated by three lengths in an easy race in Nottingham. The panel found the horse had not been run on its merits; rather, it was “used in a preparatory way for another day”. Mr Curley was fined £3,000 and the jockey in question suspended for 28 days. Soon after, Zabeel Palace disappeared for two years. It beat long odds to win on its return.

The heist of a lifetime

Probably wisely, most British bookies now refuse Mr Curley’s wagers too; most offer unattractive odds on any horse even distantly associated with him. But while locking phone lines is no longer feasible, other ruses still work. Running multiple horses on the same day and betting on all of them to win, known as an accumulator, is one. Even with sophisticated risk models, bookmakers struggle to grasp the potential liabilities of compound bets. Just a few pounds placed in numerous betting shops—or, increasingly, online—can result in a jackpot, of a kind that would require suspiciously large sums to be put down on a single horse.

The trick, of course, is to get several horses to win on the same day. An attempt to pull off a multiple coup in April 2009 foundered when only two of five horses prevailed. The venture barely broke even. In May 2010 a superior plan landed three horses out of four (see chart), enough for an estimated payout of nearly £4m. Two online bookmakers, based in Gibraltar, handed over a reported £900,000 only after 21 months of wrangling.

That scheme paid out more because bookmakers failed to spot it until it was too late. By January 2014, speculation of a four-horse plot was all over the internet before the bets opened, pushing down the odds on Indus Valley, Low Key and the rest significantly. Still, that heist—which Mr Curley swears is the last of his 40-year career—was infinitely more satisfying. “Nobody will ever do it again!” he says.

Speaking at his home in Newmarket, he claims he has moved on: “the gambling, the horses, it’s really not that important in the grand scheme of things.” The stables are empty now. A giant St Bernard, Arney, growls at passers-by, and bites given the chance. Ashtrays overflowing with Silk Cut butts have been replaced by e-cigarette paraphernalia. It is a comfortable, middle-class life rather than a millionaire’s.

Mr Curley says he has not been racing in two years, with one or two exceptions. Nor does he miss it. Mr Townsend, the author, claims younger associates now oversee the nuts-and-bolts of the schemes. But even advising them is impossible at his age, says Mr Curley, who has announced his retirement several times before. “These things take three to four years to organise.”

His avowed lack of interest is slightly contradicted by a thumbed copy of that day’s Racing Post. He is keener to discuss Direct Aid for Africa, a charity he founded in 1996 following the death of his son Charlie in a car crash. Whatever he has made from horses has gone to finance schools and hospitals in Zambia, he says. Many of his projects are linked to Catholic missions of the sort he might have joined had he stayed with the Jesuits. He visits several times a year, health permitting.

Friends and critics both acknowledge his charity work. Beyond that, British horse-racing is split over Mr Curley. Plenty think his schemes inject colour at a time when the sport badly needs it. Football long ago displaced racing as the betting man’s main pastime. Racing is declining, particularly in its lower echelons; these days, dwindling audiences are drawn as much by the catering as by the horses. To his fans, Mr Curley is a Robin Hood figure who fleeced greedy betting chains, in coups that livened up otherwise dreary races. Yellow Sam’s victory at Bellewstown is its only famous race. The horse has a bar named after it.

Critics say that, legal or otherwise, his schemes have besmirched a noble sport. “Barney Curley is a hero to many,” says John McCririck, a pundit. “But the loser in all this is the punter. Racing shouldn’t be run like that.” Mr Curley’s heists may be inimitable, but that doesn’t stop people trying: by one estimate well over 50 outfits have had a go.

For their part the bookmakers are surprisingly good-natured about him. His antics demonstrate their fallibility, which is a fine way to attract punters. The likes of Ladbrokes and William Hill have diversified away from horses anyway. Step into one of their high-street shops nowadays, and the action will probably be dominated not by Ascot or Newmarket but by gaming terminals. Often the only horses run in “virtual races”, where customers bet on imaginary, computer-generated jockeys riding imaginary mounts. Punters have no need to study a horse’s form, the firmness of the ground, or the look on the jockey’s face at the starting gate. The 20-to-1 shot wins as many times as, mathematically, it should. It is all utterly charmless, but at least you don’t have to wonder if Barney Curley ever owned any of the runners.

[Yeehaa]

Great read on Barney.

Does one Cheltenham Preview for his Charity I think.

[mayo]

At the age of 28, Max McNeill turned his back on a glamorous life in Las Vegas to set up his own technology company, selling memory products. In the 22 years since then, he has grown and evolved Ultima Business Solutions into one of the UK’s leading IT infrastructure partners. This year, its turnover is expected to exceed £80 million, and headcount will exceed 300. But McNeill has not only built a booming business – thanks to the success of Ultima he has also made a name for himself in the horse racing world. McNeill told Eleanor Harris how his business and racing are inextricably linked, and why he’ll never sell Ultima.

Max McNeill is founder and chairman of Ultima Business Solutions, based in Reading. He was born in 1962 in Blackburn, Lancashire, and moved around the country during his education, before gaining a HND in business studies. He moved to the south east in 1983 with a view to becoming an accountant, but decided it wasn’t the career for him and moved into IT sales, working for Digital, Rapid Recall, and then Digital again, having been headhunted back, before founding Ultima in 1990. Today, Ultima has 280 employees and achieved turnover of £67m to March 31, 2012. The independent company provides IT solutions and services – ranging from remote management to licensing – to private and public sector clients, which include The Daily Telegraph and Tarmac. Among its many technical awards, Ultima is a seven times Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. McNeill owns eight race horses, including Walkon, Grumeti and Handazan. Ultima is also a major jump racing sponsor, sponsoring races at Cheltenham Festival and Newbury as well as leading trainer Alan King’s yard. McNeill is married with two children, lives in Sonning, Berkshire, and supports Blackburn Rovers.

Why and how did you set up the business? What was the inspiration?

I always wanted to work for myself, build a company of my own and make some money. In 1990, the timing was right. I was 28, single, I’d got a good background in IT sales and I saw an opportunity with a friend to set up a business selling memory products. Instead of supplying the manufacturers’ own memory, we’d supply third-party memory, which was significantly cheaper. We saw a niche for doing that. At the same time, Digital, a big American corporation, had offered me a job in Las Vegas, and it was one of those crossroads: Las Vegas sounded quite appealing to a 28-year-old, but I really believed in this business, and I wanted to work on my own. I didn’t have any money, I was always in an overdraft position, but I needed to put in £5000 to set it up. I was at a wedding with one of my best old school friends and I told his father about my plans and he lent me the £5000 – without that, I probably wouldn’t have done it. For six years I halved my salary and worked all hours, but within the first six months we had already sold loads of memory and were booming.


From there, how did the company grow and evolve?

We were just selling components for the first two years and then started selling PCs and systems, but we realised we had to get into other things and offer more than just product. We quickly identified that selling services was the way forward, so we invested in technical people and building up our services business. When we moved to our current offices in 1997 and the costs went up overnight, it was a wake-up call to speed up that process and take the business to the next level, and that took us from being a “mid-teens” organisation to one turning over more than £20m. From there, we went through the dot-com boom and decided to get into remote management and set up our own 24 x 7 technical support centre. The objective was to build up a stream of business with annually recurring revenue, as well as helping to develop longer term contracts with customers. So, we’re not just a reseller, we build long-term relationships with our customers and offer them support, services, skills and knowledge. We got into managed services very early, making significant investments, and over the 22 years, that’s been our strategy, constantly looking for new opportunities to reinvest our profits. That’s how we have got to where we are today.

Is that how you would account for your success overall?

There are two things: one is nurturing the long-term relationships with our customers, but the most important thing here is people. There are over 90 people who have been here for 10 years or more, some for 20 years. We’re a people-driven business, we look after them, we motivate them, we give them a career path, we’re ambitious, we try to run it in a sensible way, while our strategy is to grow organically. Recently there’s been a lot of consolidation in our marketplace, where companies like Ultima are being taken over. The problem with so many acquistions, however, is insufficient thought is given to culture conflicts with an increased risk of losing your number one asset, your staff. We have certainly been able to benefit from this situation and have been able to offer top-notch consultants and sales people a stable and supportive environment in which to progress and develop. We’ve been very successful in this regard, and that has contributed significantly to our growth over the last few years: our turnover was mid-£40m; this year we’re heading for over £80m. And our headcount two years ago was less than 220; at the end of this year it will be over 300.

You have said that growing the business has given you the opportunity to get involved in horse racing, as an owner – tell me more?

Racing is my passion, and sport is in my blood – my dad was a professional golfer and a mad passionate racing man and football fan – and I’d always wanted to own a racehorse, but there was no point in doing it until I had enough resources to be able to do it properly. In 2005 I bought my first racehorse, Jackella, and I’ve now got eight in total. Again, you have got to reinvest. We’ve had some success with the horses, but from jump racing, Ultima has got a fantastic box at Cheltenham, which is used for entertaining both customers and staff, we can all get involved. Ultima doesn’t own the horses, financially they are separate, but any corporate entertaining and sponsorship we do is all around racing. I am very fortunate that the success of Ultima has allowed me to follow my passion in horses and build my dream house overlooking the Thames, which recently won a RIBA award for architecture. Equally, through my racing contacts, Ultima has benefitted and its profile has increased greatly through advertising, sponsorship and corporate entertainment. It has been a win-win and the continued investments keep me focused on helping to take the business to the next level.

So it’s very much two-way traffic, then – the business allows you to do the racing and building, but in turn they feed back into the business?

Yes, everything is interlinked. We have a property business which is separate from Ultima, yet rents the buildings to Ultima, and in turn has allowed us to make a couple more investments, but it’s all down to Ultima. The key question I get asked is “Are you going to sell the business?” I get offers all the time. There are many reasons why I wouldn’t sell this business: in no particular order, one is because I’d like my family to be involved in it going forward, I think that would be a great thing for them to do, if they want to do it and it is right for the business. Two, it’s a great business and it keeps me motivated. Three, because we have no external shareholders, and there has been no pressure to report short-term profits, we have always taken the long view and have a better business with unlimited potential as a consequence. It’s such a great business and it’s unique. Ultima is my life and I could never give it up. All these people who work here are more important than anything, you don’t give that up lightly.

What are your ambitions for the future? Are there more business ideas in you?

The strategy of the business is to remain independently-owned; all the shares are held within the company and, in an ideal world, I’d like to keep it that way. I can’t see myself investing in another business because there are so many areas in this business to invest in. All the good business ideas I have are related to Ultima – there is so much scope! We did acquire a company, now called Ultima Risk Management, and that was a very successful investment. There are so many opportunities for Ultima and the plan is to reinvest and continue to grow the company organically. In fact I haven’t got the mental capacity to look at another opportunity that doesn’t involve Ultima, because with the time that takes, along with the time I spend with my family, running my son’s cricket team, the horses, working on the house, playing golf and going to the gym, I just haven’t got time. I have no real ambition to set up another business with somebody else running it – I really can’t afford to take my eye off the ball. While I always keep one ear to the ground, I don’t want to spend time and energy on something that I can’t give 100% to – I need to do it full on.

Max-McNeill,-Ultima Business Solutions_1

If you couldn’t get to work, what would your ideal day involve? Racing, golf, or something else?

This afternoon, my lad is playing football against his big rival school. Where would I rather be, other than watching him play football for the first team? Nowhere. And the other one would have to be a day at Cheltenham festival, in the Ultima box, with a group of good people, watching horses – you can’t beat that. There’s a big adrenaline rush, it’s fantastic to be there. That’s what gives you a buzz, that’s what you work for.

http://www.businessmag.co.uk/entrepreneur/max-mcneill-ultima-business-solutions/

[Old Vic]

Since buying his first horse in 2001, Graham Wylie has developed into one of the most successful and high-profile owners in jumps racing. Ahead of next month’s Cheltenham Festival, Chief Sports Writer Scott Wilson met the North-East businessman and discussed his love affair with the sport of kings

HE is set to have up to ten runners at next month’s Cheltenham Festival, and boasts the ante-post favourite for two of the three feature novice hurdles, but Graham Wylie hasn’t always enjoyed such a privileged position within racing.

Sitting with one of Britain’s most successful owners, overlooking the 18th green at Close House, the championship golf course he has built to complement his equine empire, it is easy to imagine that the Newcastle-based businessman always moved in exalted sporting circles. In fact, the truth is rather different.

“I got my interest in racing from my father, who was a coal miner,” said Wylie, who made the bulk of his estimated £180m fortune from the sale of his stake in the Sage Group, the technology company he helped establish from scratch in 1981. “Every day, he’d sit and read the Daily Express while he had his breakfast, and he’d put a pound on a three-horse accumulator.

“I’d be sitting watching him while he flicked through the paper and wrote down his horses, and I’d try to keep half an eye on how they got on. We’d generally watch the racing together on a Saturday, and I used to love the big events like the Grand National and Derby when he got really excited.

“When I was in business, I used to go to the races sporadically, either as a guest or hosting other people. But it was purely social until a friend of mine said, ‘Graham, you enjoy it here so much, you’d love it if you were an owner’.

“It took a while to buy one, but after a bit too much wine after dinner one night, he persuaded me to go with him to see a horse he had with a trainer in County Durham called Howard Johnson. We went to see him the following Sunday, and there were two grey horses standing in a field. By the time we left, I’d bought one of them.”

That horse was Lord Transcend, an unraced five-year-old who was regarded within Johnson’s stable, near Crook, as nothing particularly special. Little did Wylie know it at the time, but he would prove to be the spark for a love affair that rapidly took over the North-Easterner’s life.

A class four novice hurdle at Newcastle might seem like an inauspicious way to launch one of the most successful ownership careers in National Hunt racing, but that was the setting for Lord Transcend’s first run, an event that did not exactly turn out as intended.

“He was 33-1 and I said, ‘Howard, I’m going to go and put a bet on. I’m going to have five pounds each way’,” said Wylie. “Howard said, ‘Don’t be so stupid – he’s got no chance of winning today’.

“I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Listen, he’s not going to win. It’s his first time on a racecourse, he’s got no idea, and there are a couple of good horses in the race. It’s not going to happen’.

“Anyway, he romped in. He won by about ten lengths and by the time I got back to see the horse, Howard was having a furious conversation with the jockey.

“I said, ‘It’s alright Howard. I put the bet on anyway so I’m going to get my winnings’. He said, ‘No Graham, he’s lost his novice status’. I didn’t have a clue what that meant, but it meant he would have to run in much better races the following season. Not that it did him any harm mind.”

Elevated to handicap company, Lord Transcend went on to win four of his next five races, with his only defeat coming in the Aintree Hurdle during 2003’s Grand National meeting. Wylie was hooked, and having plucked his first horse at random from the middle of a field, his lucky streak continued.

“My second horse was Royal Rosa, my third horse was Inglis Drever, my fourth horse was Arcalis and my fifth horse was No Refuge,” he said. “So it wasn’t exactly a bad way to get going.”

Even today, more than six years after his retirement, Inglis Drever is still discussed in reverential tones whenever his Cheltenham record is mentioned.

The long-distance hurdler won three World Hurdles, a record that is only matched by the equally legendary Big Buck’s, and regularly blitzed his rivals with a rare combination of pace, power and seemingly endless reserves of stamina.

His successes catapulted Wylie into the racing stratosphere, and contributed to a remarkable week in 2005 that saw the rookie owner celebrate three winners at Cheltenham.

“He was the horse of a lifetime really, and I guess I’ve been trying to find another one like him ever since,” he said. “If I hadn’t had those big winners early doors, and experienced the thrill of having a horse like Inglis Drever, would I have all the horses I have today? Probably not. I had that great success early on, and really got a passion for it. I’ve been trying to emulate it ever since.”

That search has seen Wylie preside over some of the biggest names in jumps racing. Tidal Bay, one of the most enigmatic horses of the last decade and runaway winner of the 2008 Arkle. Boston Bob, victor in the Melling Chase and Punchestown Gold Cup. On His Own, runner-up in last year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup after a thrilling photo finish with Lord Windermere.

The successes have been plentiful, but things haven’t always followed an unbroken upward curve. In 2011, Wylie’s friend and trainer, Johnson, received a four-year ban from the British Horseracing Authority for showing a “reckless disregard” for horse welfare.

Johnson was proved to have run a horse after it had undergone a palmar neurectomy, an operation that involves the severing or removal of leg nerves running to the foot. His stables were effectively closed down overnight, with his reputation in ruins. Given how much time and money Wylie had poured into Johnson’s operation, was he tempted to throw in the towel?

“It never even entered my mind,” he said. “I had a lot of good horses, and I wasn’t going to just give them away. I never thought about pulling out of racing – it was just a question of how best to move on.

“I said to Howard, ‘I’ve got to put my horses somewhere’, and we agreed that I should go to the best trainer in England and the best trainer in Ireland. That was Paul Nicholls and Willie Mullins.

“Howard really pushed going to Willie because he thought a lot of the horses were best on soft ground, and you tend to get that in Ireland. I put 12 over to Willie and 12 with Paul, and Willie has been absolutely fantastic so I’ve actually gone on to buy more.”

The fruits of that recruitment drive will be apparent at Cheltenham next month. As well as On His Own’s Gold Cup return, Wylie will also be able to watch three of the most exciting novice hurdlers in racing, with Shaneshill, Nichols Canyon and Black Hercules set to tackle the Supreme, Neptune and Albert Bartlett respectively.

“I’m enjoying it more than ever,” he said. “My wife and I go down to Cheltenham every year. That’s our week away, and I have a box right next to the judge.

“The excitement never leaves you. Every time one of my horses is running, I get a tingle of nerves and excitement. Hand on heart, I just hope they all run well and come back safely. But if one of them wins along the way, that would obviously be great.”

And unlike the day when it all started, it’s a safe bet that none of them will be going off at anything like 33-1.

**

GRAHAM WYLIE'S FIVE CHELTENHAM HORSES TO FOLLOW



SHANESHILL

(Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, Tuesday March 10, 12-1)

“He hasn’t been out since he came second at Navan in December because he had a setback. Willie says he’s hoping to get him to Cheltenham for us, and he’s getting there.

“He’s not there yet, but he’s getting there and if he lines up it’ll be in the Supreme and he’ll have a decent chance. Willie obviously has Douvan in the race as well, and some people are saying the Supreme is not the right race for him, but Willie is adamant that it is. Hopefully, his stamina will come into play.”



NICHOLS CANYON

(Neptune Novices’ Hurdle, Wednesday March 11, 4-1)

“He’s been excellent all season, and it’s just a shame he stepped on that hurdle over Christmas (at Leopardstown) because that’s the only blemish on his record. He would have won three Grade Ones if that hadn’t happened.

“He’s still a double Grade One winner though, and if he jumps well, Ruby says he has tonnes of stamina. He’ll run in the Neptune, and he’s got a great chance.



BRIAR HILL

(World Hurdle, Thursday March 12, 16-1)

“He had a crashing fall at Cheltenham last year and we’ve spent all year nursing him back into contention.

“He came eighth at Christmas, but that was just a little run around the back to get him back into the swing of racing really. David Casey actually said he thought he was going to win at the third last, but he clipped the second last and emptied, but that’s because he wasn’t fit enough.

“He came fourth after that and Ruby said he was getting there, and then last time out he was primed, he came to win the race, but he fell at the last. He’s fine, but it’s what’s in his head now that is the question.”



BLACK HERCULES

(Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle, Friday March 13, 5-1)

“He’ll run in the Albert Bartlett over three miles. He’s a monster, and I’m sure he’ll stay that no problem. He’s been in great form, although it’s a bit of a shame that we haven’t been able to get him out since December.

“There haven’t been that many three miles races to put him in, and that’s what he needs. Willie’s looking forward to seeing him in action again, and there’s also a chance he could roll on to Aintree and Punchestown too.”



ON HIS OWN

(Cheltenham Gold Cup, Friday March 13, 20-1)

“To be honest, I’ve been a bit disappointed with him this season. I thought he was going to finish seventh when he came over the last in last year’s Gold Cup, but by the end, I thought he’d maybe won it. He stormed up that hill, and to come second was brilliant. I had to supplement him for the race, and I was just thinking, ‘Don’t make an idiot of me’.

“He ran well in the Lexus, but the ground was heavy that day and it was a stamina test. That’s what he wants. In the Hennessey, it was better ground, and Ruby got off and said three miles wasn’t far enough for him.

“He’s going back to the Gold Cup. It’s three miles two, with a hill at the end, and hopefully the greater stamina test, run at more of a pace, might suit him.”

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/sport/11823653.Saturday_Spotlight__Wylie_goes_from_racing_novice_to_one_of_the_Festival_s_leading_lights/

[Old Vic]

Ricci getting involved with flat



Ricci, whose well-fancied runners at Cheltenham next week include Faugheen, Annie Power and Douvan, has the two-year-olds in partnership with friends Michael Buckley and Paul Shanahan.

“They have yet to be named,” said Ricci at a Paddy Power Cheltenham preview on Monday.

“Michael and I have known each other a long time and he has enjoyed great times with Toast Of New York over the last two years, before selling him on.

“If one of these turns out to be his equal we would be thrilled.”

Buckley and Shanahan sold their star filly Prize Exhibit to stay in America after she finished fourth at Santa Anita in the Breeders’ Cup Fillies’ Turf.

Both have nothing but praise for their ‘Osborne experience’.

“I’m a big fan of Jamie’s – always have been,” said Buckley. “Any guy that can win 50 races with 50 horses is an exceptional trainer. He has been churning that proportion of winners out year after year.

“What he has achieved with Toast Of New York and Prime Exhibit makes him one of the very best guys currently training.”

Ricci nominated his Gold Cup hope Djakadam for his £500 Paddy Power Cheltenham Charity bet.

[mayo]

Hammer and Trowel ( from about 2012)

Niall O'Connor and Cormac Byrne – 14 March 2012 03:00 PM
BUILDERS may be having a tough time right now but that didn't stop these two developers celebrating a Cheltenham winner.


The developer pair were cock-a-hoop when their horse romped home to secure Ireland's first and only win on the festival's opening day.

They call themselves 'The Hammer' and 'The Trowel' but all of Cheltenham was asking today: 'How do they do it?'

But as Ger O'Brien and Sean Deane lived it up in the parade ring, one half of the so-called 'simple builders' was facing an uncertain future.

O'Brien, half of the Quevega partnership and his company owes creditors €12.7 million.

While the recession has hit the building industry pretty hard, eyebrows were raised by many who knew O'Brien about his presence in the owner's enclosure.

"It seems a little strange that this guy's company owes all this money and he is still allowed to live it up over here," said an insider.

Stunning

It is the fourth time Quevega has come home in front at the festival -- with yesterday's stunning victory netting her owners a cool €47,000.

The horse was bought by O'Brien and Deane in 2007, having begun her early career in France.

The property developers formed The Hammer and Trowel syndicate in the early 2000s, with O'Brien dubbing himself The Hammer.

O'Brien, a carpenter from Clane in co Kildare and his partner Sean Deane, a blocklayer originally from co Leitrim formed the syndicate when the property sector was booming.

However their construction companies have fallen on hard times in recent years as a result of the recession and the bursting of the property bubble.

The pair refused to speak to any media last week -- refusing to give interviews on the success of their most precious asset.

O'Brien in particular has been hit by the crash and faces a tough battle to keep his Kildare-based construction company afloat. The latest accounts filed by Willowbridge Development ltd shows that it owes its creditors €12.7m.

It has reported major losses in recent years, with its latest accounts showing losses of over €600,000.

The Hammer and The Trowel syndicate will be represented in tomorrow's World Hurdle by Thousand Stars, a previous festival winner, who takes on the mighty Big Bucks.

The duo's first foray into ownership came in 2005 when they formed their syndicate and bought Paris Prince, trained by Noel Meade.

The King's Theatre gelding had little success on the track and was switched to point-to-points, where he performed indifferently and was retired without a single win.

O'Brien's hometown of Clane was also home to Clongowes Wood College, where Patrick Mullins attended, and Willie Mullins' frequent visits to the vicinity resulted in a chance meeting with O'Brien and Dean and their affiliation was formed.

In December 2007, the syndicate acquired Quevega on Mullins' advice and she delivered immediately for her new owners twice on the bounce in early 2008.

Between the syndicate's three horses Quevega, Thousand Stars and J'y Vole, they have netted their owners almost 700,000 euro in prizemoney.

[Old Vic]

[mayo]

Pat Keane

Newcastle-based businessman Graham Wylie, and his wife Andrea, are living the dream and surely grateful for the day they decided to have horses in training with Willie Mullins.
The Wylies, originally, were best known as the owners of the great Inglis Drever, the first horse to ever win the Ladbrokes’ World Hurdle at the Cheltenham festival on three occasions. That feat was later achieved as well by the mighty Big Buck’s.

Graham Wylie bought his first horse in 2001 and, of course, was very much associated with the Howard Johnson yard in the north of England. Johnson trained Inglis Drever and the Wylies were his principal patrons.

But when Johnson was banned for four years in 2011 by the BHA, immediately announcing his retirement, the Wylies decided that they would move their horses to what they regarded as the best trainer in England, Paul Nicholls and to the best in Ireland, Mullins.
What has followed with Mullins has been quite extraordinary, with the Wylie colours now being sported by some very high-class horses.

Graham Wylie was co-founder of The Sage Group in 1981, the largest software business in the UK. In 2003, he sold his stake in Sage and is said to have made his money in that deal, some £180m.

Also in 2003, Wylie founded Technology Services Group and reportedly expanded the business primarily through acquisition. The millionaire businessman clearly has a huge love of racing, especially the National Hunt variety, and has been a massive plus for the Mullins operation.

Mullins buys the horses for Wylie and the last couple of weeks have emphasised just what a dream team this connection has become.

All being well, the Wylies can look forward to the likes of Nichols Canyon, Shaneshill, Bellshill, Yorkhill, Up For Review and Black Hercules sporting their famous colours at the Cheltenham festival.

At the weekend, Wylie indicated that he basically leaves the decisions to Mullins and if two of his horses were to run in the one race at Cheltenham would have no problem with that.

Nichols Canyon clearly rates as the main danger to stable companion, Faugheen, in the Champion Hurdle.

Not the biggest horse in training, he had to dig deep at Leopardstown at Christmas to beat Identity Thief, in terrible ground.

That success was one of a number of excellent results for the Wylies over that period. Their Yorkhill proved a snug winner of the Tolworth Hurdle at Sandown last Saturday, even if not finding as much as he threatened to do from the back of the final flight.

Shaneshill is a real favourite of mine and the two and a half mile JLT Novices’ Chase shapes as his most likely target at Cheltenham.

He won well at Naas last Sunday and will have learned from a mistake two out and guessing somewhat at the final fence.

Bellshill too did the business at Naas and you just cannot crab a performance that came on really bad ground.

You couldn’t fail to be impressed by Up For Review at Punchestown on New Year’s Eve, galloping Jetstream Jack silly to beat him by an unflattering 13 lengths in a three-mile novice hurdle.

The Albert Bartlett is on his agenda and he just seems to possess what is best described as endless stamina.

And then there is Black Hercules, a spectacular winner first time over fences at Navan in the middle of last month, who has RSA Chase written all over him.

The Wylies aren’t short of a few bob, aren’t short of a few good horses and not short of a trainer either. They are lucky, lucky people.