WHETHER it was a life-changing Yankee or a glorious ante-post winner, we could all do with a reminder of our greatest racing triumphs.

Nothing lifts the mood like happy memories of bookie-bashing bets. Here’s my six of the best.

 

Six Of My Best Bets

 

Very Promising

Coming from a family of jockeys I was well used to being on the racecourse but Mackeson Gold Cup day in 1986 was the first time I had gone to the track with my mates.

I can still remember the feeling of experiencing the sounds and the smells for the first time having made the short trip over Cleeve Hill to Cheltenham racecourse.

For someone who struggles to recall what happened last week, it still amazes me that the memories of horses from decades back are so vivid.

I seem to remember Kildimo and Robin Wonder winning earlier on the card before I placed £2 to win on Very Promising in the big race.

Half Free was, I think, the favourite as he was going for his third straight win in the race. All was going well for Very Promising – trained by David Nicholson and ridden by Richard Dunwoody – as he moved upsides the leader turning to go down the hill with three fences to jump. Then confusion.

The commentator stopped saying his name. Suddenly, from nowhere, a horse called Voice Of Progress had dashed into the lead and battled on to beat Half Free.

Quite what possessed the commentator to confuse Very Promising with a stablemate that wasn’t even in the race God only knows but, happily, the number on the saddle cloth matched my fancy.

I was smitten and it sent me on the road to a lifetime of racecourses, dog tracks and betting shops. My mum would probably disagree but it was the best bet of my life!

 

Rejected Lady

Growing up half a dozen miles from Cheltenham racecourse I had so many magical days there.

Beech Road’s shock Champion Hurdle win was my first day at the Festival, then there was one of my heroes, Josh Gifford, knocking in a four-timer with the likes of Green Willow and Vodkatini at the December meeting.

Few, if anyone, will remember Rejected Lady. Trained by John Francome’s one-time assistant Liam Codd, she could not have had a more uninspiring career.

When she lined up for a five-runner novices’ chase at the New Year meeting in 1989 she was a 100-1 shot. I was going through a phase of chancing outsiders – I backed Will Raine at 33-1 when he won a Stratford seller on a soggy February day shortly after – so that didn’t bother me.

The favourite was subsequent dual Irish Gold Cup winner Nick The Brief at an unbackable 1-3. Rejected Lady was 25-1 in the betting without the red-hot favourite. I had £2 on her.

Nick The Brief won like an odds-on shot should and the other three runners all fell. It was, probably, the luckiest winner I ever backed but the taste of victory was sweet as I seem to remember we almost made ourselves sick on all the doughnuts we bought with the winnings.

 

Lord Gyllene

When I was on the last of my many college courses after finding manual labour, surprisingly enough, was pretty hard work, I started doing football reports for a local radio station at weekends.

On Grand National day in 1997 I was in Nuneaton as Cheltenham Town – in those days in the Beazer Homes League – were playing away in one of their ‘glamour’ matches.

A friend had driven me up there and, when we arrived, we sought out a betting shop expecting to watch the National at half time in the football club bar.

Word soon circulated around the ground that there had been an IRA bomb threat and Aintree had been evacuated.

It was only four years after the shambles of the voided Grand National due to false starts so the feeling was that it would be another year without a winner and we didn’t give it much thought.

That was until it was revealed the race would go ahead – on Monday. As far as I remember it was a beautiful spring evening made even more glorious by watching Lord Gyllene skip away for one of the smoothest National wins in history.

To make matters even better he had drifted in the betting from something like 10-1 on Saturday morning out to 14-1.

There was only one problem – how to get my winnings. I didn’t really fancy another trip to Nuneaton so, a few days later, I walked into the Cheltenham branch of the bookies I’d placed the bet in.

When I passed over the winning slip and told him where the bet had been struck, the dry old boy behind the counter replied “you better hurry up, the last bus is leaving in a few minutes”.

Luckily, he was only joking!

Lord Gyllene – Grand National 1997 pic.twitter.com/dSTOHtDvFP

— Racing Tales (@Racing_Tales) March 15, 2020

 

Sir Talbot

In the days when the Cheltenham Festival was only three days the final race was traditionally the County Hurdle.

We always went every day and in 1999 one of my mates decided he wasn’t going to have a bet all week but he was going to lay all our punts.

Although not strictly to the letter of the law it made all of us even more determined to find a few winners and we certainly didn’t hold back the celebrations when we did.

Despite having to put up with the taunts when he had to pay out he was making a good few quid going into the County Hurdle. I don’t think I’d had much of a week so I decided I could do without throwing more cash down the well in a 30-runner handicap hurdle.

As they circled at the start I must have though ‘in for plenty of pennies, in for more pounds’ and handed my mate another score.

Sir Talbot – trained by Jim Old and in the colours of one of my favourite horses Mole Board – was sent off 10-1.

There wasn’t much for me to worry about as he was always well positioned before pulling away up the run-in to win by six lengths from hot favourite Decoupage.

My pal tried to take the hit in good grace but he wasn’t his usual chipper self as he counted the twenties into my hand.

The next time I backed Sir Talbot was ante-post for the next year’s Champion Hurdle – Istabraq’s third – a couple of weeks before the Festival. I worked out I must have placed the bet at virtually the exact same time he was falling in a schooling session that ruled him out of the race. The Lord giveth . . .

 

Greenaway Bay

It’s not hard to find out the exact date of this successful day’s punting.

It was 7 October 2000 and most sports fans were glued to England v Germany in the final International match at Wembley before the stadium was knocked down and rebuilt.

I was working in Leeds at the time and decided a train ride to York races was a much better way to spend my time than watch the latest footballing disappointment from the national team.

It was the early days of the internet and I had spent the previous evening studying the card online.

One horse stood out. It was Greenaway Bay, trained by Karl Burke.

I backed him at, maybe, 16-1 each-way, and then topped up with a fair bit on course as well.

The weather was pretty grim but he was easy to spot in the nine-furlong handicap as he cruised all the way round before holding on well in the heavy ground.

He returned at 12-1 but paid nearly 20s on the Tote so it really was a decent day. As I’m sure one can imagine I was pretty pleased with myself as I made the walk from the racecourse to York train station.

It was pouring down with rain but I couldn’t have been happier. As I made my way down the tree-lined avenue from the track a group of football supporters were coming the other way dressed in their England football shirts, presumably having just watched Germany win 1-0 at some local pub in Kevin Keegan’s last game as manager.

As they spotted me walked towards them in a long brown coat, pink shirt and with my hair soaking wet the biggest of the group said loudly “look at the state of this *&@!”.

I had to smile to myself as I passed them, pockets stuffed with cash, thinking ‘I’ve had a much better day than you have, lads’.

 

Neptune Collonges

The closest finish in Grand National history. Neptune Collonges wins by a whisker! #WhatAFinish#GrandNational #HappyHour pic.twitter.com/NGe4r5on3I

— Racing TV (@RacingTV) April 5, 2019

I’ll be forever grateful for the last couple of inches on the end of Neptune Collonges’ nose.

His last-gasp Grand National win in 2012 not only won me a nice few quid but it also went a long way towards securing me the prestigious Racing Post Naps title.

It’s a much harder race to work out than it used to be but I really fancied the 11-year-old grey. He had been third behind Denman and Kauto Star in the Gold Cup four years earlier and he had stayed on really well when runner-up in Haydock’s Grand National Trial on his most recent start.

I watched the race on the old owners and trainers’ stand at Aintree high up some rickety old steps. As they passed the post it was hard to know if he had got up in the last stride or if Sunnyhillboy had held on.

When his number was read out by the judge I strangely didn’t know what to do with myself.

For a newspaper tipster, the National is by far the most important race and I knew not many others had found the 33-1 winner.

I strode triumphantly back to the press room to be greeted by my old friend and colleague Claude Duval. He was holding his arms aloft while typically goading the other national newspaper tipsters he didn’t care for.

I went in for the celebratory man hug but as I got close he thrust out his arm for a firm handshake. Old school, is Claude.

 

Worst bets

There have been some shockers, too.

One of them came this year when, searching for some ante-post value in what looked an open Unibet Champion Hurdle, I backed Eldorado Allen a few hours before he was stuffed at Sandown in February.

Thomas Patrick for last year’s Gold Cup was another embarrassing ante-post bet and I once even backed Mr Mole to give 10lbs to Sprinter Sacre at Cheltenham’s November meeting.

None were my finest hour but they look positively shrewd compared with one staggeringly bad wager.

It was nearly 30 years ago when telephone credit accounts were the best way to get a bet on if you weren’t either on track or near a betting shop.

The way it worked, kids, was that you rang up to place your bet and then sent off a cheque to pay for it when the weekly statement arrived. Sometimes, on the odd occasion, you even got one back.

Passing over a cheque with the bookies name on it to a bank cashier made you feel like Barney Curley, even if it was for £12.50.

In those days I went through phases in my betting. One mad scheme I dreamed up involved picking one ‘cert’ and doubling it up with every bet I had on the day. All fine until the banker got beat and you got cleaned out.

At this particular point in my punting life while working in a factory I was backing short ‘uns, mainly odds-on shots. Yes, I know.

It was a six-runner novice chase at Plumpton and Old Dundalk was the 10-11 favourite. He’d been a useful staying hurdler and looked better than his rivals, so in I went with a chunk of my weekly wage.

Old Dundalk was making his chase debut, it showed and he never ran over fences again after pulling up. A year later, after falling on his last hurdles run ‘under rules’, he refused in a point-to-point.

Luckily, I soon realised betting odds-on shots was not clever if I wanted to bank a bookies’ cheque ever again.