Punters at a county Meath racetrack this coming week may not realise it but they will be literally walking in the footprints of betting history. The annual Bellewstown summer festival takes place this next weekend (July 3rd- 5th) The most legendary and audacious betting coup in Irish horse racing took place at the venue 50 years ago this month. It will forever be recalled as the day Barney bashed the bookies.
Orchestrated by gambler supreme the late Barney Curley( pictured above) and Curragh trainer Liam Brennan the stroke, planned with military precision took the odds layers for £300,000on on the July 26th 1975 (value today(€2m) came off when an unfancied horse called Yellow Sam won by two and a half lengths in an obscure hurdle race for amateur jockeys at the annual summer festival at Bellewstown races in county Meath.
The jockey on the day Michael Furlong now farming in Wexford was as much in the dark about what was going on as everyone else apart from Curley’s trusted lieutenants and even they, stationed in betting offices around the country did not know what horse they were to back until ten minutes before the start when they were finally allowed to open an envelope they had been given the previous night.
The hundreds of foot soldiers then discovered the nags name as well as a sum of money, anything between 50 and 300 pounds they were to place on it.
Central to the plan was the fact Bellewstown had only one telephone available to bookies and prior to the off Curley’s mate Benny O’Hanlon commandeered that pretending to be talking to a hospital about his dying aunt.
Bellewstown will host it’s July Festival from Thursday 3rd July to Saturday 5th July.
Benny ignored shouts to get off the phone which meant the offices where the money was down could not contact on course bookies to tell them to cut the starting price ensuring Yellow Sams SP was 20/1.
So detailed was the scheme that Curley, who died in 2021, subsequently revealed in his autobiography, “It didn’t matter if they dragged Benny of the blower as the next in line to use it was another of my men”.
With bookies frantically failing to reach Bellewstown by phone Brennan issued simple concise four word riding instructions to the jockey.
He just said ‘don’t fxxkin fall off’ and that was it. I kind of wondered then as normally trainers would go into far greater detail is Furlongs recollection. The jockey stayed on board as Yellow Sam led from start to finish winning readily.
Bookmakers cried foul but discovered no laws had been broken and eventually paid out Curley’s winnings.
