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07 Jun 26
10:27
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08 Feb 08
A good read. Can’t seem to copy and paste it here to bypass the paywall.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/a7dcb786-3500-4ad9-be58-a6e46eeba182?shareToken=75dac6609180613bf02b005183e65e63
https://www.thetimes.com/article/a7dcb786-3500-4ad9-be58-a6e46eeba182?shareToken=75dac6609180613bf02b005183e65e63
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The Times has made this story into a half-hour podcast, available on the usual platforms and on YouTube at:-
The Big Coup: How A Small-Time Horse Trainer Took on The Bookies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKXRRG3uVA4
The Big Coup: How A Small-Time Horse Trainer Took on The Bookies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKXRRG3uVA4
Meet the man who beat the bookies and won half a million
Racing trainer Declan Queally dreamt of one day pulling off gambling coup like one that had earned Barney Curley nearly £4million. In the spring of 2024, things fell into place
Trainer Declan Queally leans on a white rail beside the Curraghmore Estate Gallops in County Waterford.
Queally on the Curraghmore gallops where he supervises training for the family-run operation
Morgan Treacy/Inpho
David Walsh
David Walsh, Chief Sports Writer
Saturday June 06 2026, 5.30pm, The Sunday Times
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• 17:24 min
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One evening in 1953 a 14-year-old boy, on holidays from his boarding school in Monaghan town, was asked by his father to take a greyhound to a race in Lifford, Co Donegal. The family lived in Irvinestown, Co Fermanagh, and the lad was roped in because his father was taking another dog to Celtic Park in Belfast. Ernest McCaffrey, a local taxi driver and family friend, would take the boy and the animal to the Donegal track.
Before leaving Irvinestown, the boy was handed a ball of raw meat by his father. “Give this to the dog when you reach Strabane,” he was told. Strabane in Co Tyrone is just three miles from Lifford. The reason for the pre-race meal was not discussed, but the boy had figured it out. He wasn’t what you might call an average 14-year-old.
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It took an hour or so to get from Irvinestown to Strabane. Sitting with the greyhound in the back of McCaffrey’s taxi, different thoughts struck the boy. What if he didn’t give the dog his pre-race meal? Well, the dog would probably win. From observing his father on his journey from successful businessman to hopeless professional gambler, the boy had worked out the meatball would stop the dog winning.
Black and white close-up of Irish professional gambler Barney Curley wearing a fedora and looking to the left.
The trainer and professional gambler Curley in 1984
Getty images
Knowing this, he had a choice. He could do what he was told to do or … Not to serve the meatball to the dog would be to betray his father. The boy chose betrayal.
It wasn’t straightforward. McCaffrey, the taxi driver, knew about the nutritional arrangements and around Strabane, the boy felt he was being watched through the rearview mirror. Cupping his empty hand and bringing it to the dog’s mouth, he pretended to feed him the meatball. “There’s a good dog.”
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Before the start of the race, the boy checked the bookies’ prices. His dog was 6-1. Familiar with the jargon, he walked up to one of the bookmakers and said he would have £12 to £2. His charge duly won and the boy left Lifford that evening with £14 in his pocket. For a 14-year-old in 1953, this was a small fortune.
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Coming from their different tracks, father and son got back in Irvinestown around midnight.
“How did you get on,” the dad asked.
“He won,” the boy replied.
“He couldn’t have won.”
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“Oh yes. Five or six lengths.”
Upset by the news, the older one thought about the man who’d supplied the tablet concealed in the meatball. “The fool’s given me the wrong pills,” he said, and nothing would do but to call round to the man’s house at this ridiculously late hour and berate him for a mistake he’d not made.
The boy and his father would share many years after this eventful evening, have conversations about dogs, horses and gambling. With ample opportunity to do so, the boy never confessed to his father what he’d done that evening in Lifford.
Race horse trainer Barney Curley tipping his hat to the camera at a racetrack, surrounded by other spectators.
Curley was motivated not so much by money as by a wish to put one over the bookmakers
Times Newspapers Ltd
While you wonder if the boy was within his rights to withhold the meatball, consider what became of him afterwards. His first ambition was to devote his life to God and as a teenager he entered a seminary at Mungret College in Limerick and spent four years studying to be a Jesuit priest. After falling to tuberculosis, he took time out to recover and never returned.
Instead his life followed a different path. You could say he went back to a first love; using his wits to outsmart bookmakers. Barney Curley was his name and he became one of the shrewdest professional gamblers to have backed a horse in the UK and Ireland. Like a military general, he meticulously planned his coups and won a lot. Never was it about the money. Rather it was those that he saw as the enemy; big bookmaking firms.
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In later life he would look on his days as a successful gambler and consider that he devoted a lot of time to something that didn’t amount to much. So, in the autumn of his life, he founded the charity Data (Direct Aid for Africa) and began raising money for important projects in Zambia. From the well-off in racing he got funding. For the much less well-off in Zambia, he built a school and a hospital.
The faith that underpinned Curley’s desire to be a Jesuit priest remained a central part of his life. In Newmarket, where he lived until his death in 2021, he was a daily mass goer. People said if he wasn’t at mass, he must be in Africa.
As for the story about the greyhound and the meatball, we know this to be true because Curley told it to his biographer Nick Townsend, who retold it in his book, The Sure Thing: The Greatest Coup in Horse Racing History.
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On Friday morning, April 19, 2024, Declan Queally had a lot on his mind. He was then a 36-year-old amateur jockey and an assistant trainer to his father Declan Sr. They have a small, mostly family-run operation at Curraghmore in Co Waterford. Declan Sr is a grafter. Harrows the gallops, takes care of the feeding and talks to the owner.
Declan Jr supervises the training of the horses, makes the call on where they run, travels to the races and will often drive the horse box. That Friday was a big day for Declan Queally. They had seven horses running; four at Limerick and three at Ballinrobe. Declan thought a few of them had a good chance of winning but kept that thought very much to himself.
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A lot of planning had gone into the day because even if the horses won, the prize money wasn’t going to be enough. They are a selling yard. Find a nice young horse, win a race, sell it on at a profit. It’s a well-worn route to survival for small operations. But around this time, the market slowed and Declan was stuck with a number of horses in which he had a 50 per cent stake.
We are sitting in the kitchen of his home in Ballinroad, Co Waterford, because I have long been intrigued by what happened on that Friday in April 2024. And he agreed to explain. “Because we had not been able to sell a few horses, I suddenly had a bit of debt. Maybe €60k or €70k with Goffs, the same with Tattersalls. Another fairly big amount with Red Mills, the feed company. Add a few more smaller bills and you wouldn’t be far off €200k.
Declan Queally, partner Avril Murphy, and children Molly and Ross at Curraghmore Estate Gallops.
Queally with his daughter Molly, son Ross and partner Avril Murphy, who went to Manchester to make a series of discreet bets on the yard’s horses
Morgan Treacy/Inpho
“So there was pressure. I was under pressure because these bills were due to be paid. We pay all our bills, always. But paying ’em back, grand by grand every month, would’ve been painful, even though I would’ve done it. But I thought there had to be a better way of doing this.”
Twenty years before, Declan Queally was sent from his Co Waterford home to Newmarket for the summer holidays. His parents had looked up to Barney Curley and believed a few months working for the trainer would teach him a lot. His older brother Tom, who would become famous as Frankel’s jockey, had already teamed up with Curley and was riding plenty of winners.
And that year, 2004, Curley gave 16-year-old Declan his first winning ride, Cristoforo at Windsor. In 2010 Curley organised what many believe was the greatest gambling coup ever attempted in Britain. Four horses at three different racecourses and a military-like operation to get as much money as possible on all four, backing them in single bets, doubles, trebles and accumulators.
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Three of the four horses won and when Curley and his men did their audit afterwards, they’d made a £3.9million profit. Declan Queally rode two of the four horses; winning on the first, Savaronola, and losing on the second, Sommersturm, who was sent off a 1-3 favourite. “Next morning we have a debrief meeting in the staff house. Barney came in, **** in his mouth. ‘Well, we got on well yesterday and you know what I love about this game, boys, and it tells you about horses. The one that I thought was the biggest certainty was the one that got beaten.’
“‘Declan,’ he said to me, ‘I made almost £4million yesterday and if that 1-3 favourite that you got beaten on had won, it would have been £20million. But don’t you be letting that play on your mind now. The horse wasn’t good enough. I hear a couple of people saying that you gave him too much to do. That horse ran in the German Derby three years ago. He should have been able to jump off a minute after those horses in Wolverhampton and still beaten them.’ ”
Trainer Declan Queally holding a saddle next to a horse at Curraghmore Estate Gallops.
Secrecy is key to pulling off a betting coup and even the staff at the yard have to be kept in the dark
Morgan Treacy/Inpho
What Declan learnt from Curley was the need for secrecy. “Barney didn’t want any of his staff to know what he was planning. If he was preparing two horses for a gamble, he might get up at four in the morning and work the horses before the staff got in. At six, when the staff came in, he’d say to the head lad, ‘Just put those two on the walker, they’re a bit off colour.’ So no one was able to see the plan.”
Queally dreamt of one day pulling off a Curley-like coup. And in the spring of 2024, things fell into place.
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The year had begun quietly. His horses weren’t performing and he wondered if there was a bit of sickness in the yard. As the weather improved, his horses began to look better. There were two novice hurdlers that he liked, the gelding Rocky’s Diamond and the mare Diamond Nora. They’d performed disappointingly in maiden hurdles — races for horses that have never won — but Queally knew they were better than those runs suggested.
Around this time, he noticed something odd in the way horses were priced up in maiden hurdles. “I said to my father at one stage, ‘I can see a trend watching the betting for these races,’ and how some horses were going off at criminal prices after finishing mid-division in a maiden hurdle. There’s no one saying the horse is no good, no one saying that there’s anything wrong with the horse.
“Just because the horse has finished down the field in two maiden hurdles, the bookie’s algorithm then decides the horse is just running to get his handicap mark, therefore isn’t going to be trying too hard to win the race. Presuming this, the bookies then offer these huge odds, 100-1 and more, to get people backing horses the bookmakers believe are only running to get handicapped. This is even more the case in maiden hurdles the week before the Punchestown Festival in late May.
Rocky’s Diamond with Shane Fitzgerald jumping over a hurdle, leading another horse in a race.
Rocky’s Diamond was backed at odds of up to 100-1 by Queally’s team and promptly romped home at Limerick
Patrick McCann/racing post
“They presume most trainers don’t want to win a maiden the week before Punchestown because that’s when the season ends and any horse winning a maiden at that time is going to get a high handicap mark and can’t compete as a novice the following season. The bookies had fallen into the trap of presuming that a week before Punchestown, most horses running in maiden hurdles were just looking to get a good handicap mark.
“I had two nice young horses, Rocky’s Diamond and Diamond Nora, who’d been disappointing in February and March but then turned a corner in early April. I’d got Diamond Nora’s wind done and they were both starting to work well. I thought that if we could back them at these ridiculously long prices, it would be worth sacrificing their novice seasons.”
Of the seven horses that went to Limerick and Ballinrobe on that Friday, Queally thought four of them could be backed. Rocky’s Diamond, Diamond Nora, Olympy De Cerisy and Manatee Du Brizais. He’d set aside €8,000 (about £7,000) in cash and drawn up a plan to get the money on without alerting the bookmakers to what was happening, so that bets could be placed at the best possible odds.
“To every owner, I say the same thing. We are a gambling stable and if we think your horse has a chance of winning, no one else will be told and you will be told just ten minutes before the race. So the owner must be at the races every time the horse runs. I tell them, ‘If you want to try to sting the bookies, you have to do it late, because 50 quid the night before is going to just ruin everything.’
“Five minutes before Rocky’s Diamond’s race in Limerick, I was keeping an eye on things in the ring and on one board he was 100-1, 80-1 on another. I had a friend in the ring, a big punter well known to the bookmakers who bets in cash, and because he’s a regular client, they’d accept his bets. He wins plenty, he loses plenty and he knows how much he’d be able to get on with the different bookmakers.
Declan Queally and connections of Rocky’s Diamond pose for a photo with the horse and jockey after winning the race.
Connections of Rocky’s Diamond enjoy the horse’s victory in the John Mulhern Galmoy Hurdle last year — when he was sent off at 5-1 rather than the huge price which cost the bookies a fortune in 2024
Morgan Treacy/Inpho
“He’s got my money and he’s going to get on as much as he can at the best possible prices. He struck one bet, €250 each way on Rocky’s Diamond at 100-1. That’s €30,000 on one bet if the horse were to win.”
The bookmaker Colm White, who was working at Limerick that evening, says: “That was Johnny O’Mahony doing the betting for Declan. We were always going to do business with Johnny.”
O’Mahony was one piece in the jigsaw. Queally had another punter working on his behalf at Ballinrobe races, where his job was to get as much as he could on Diamond Nora. Other trusted friends were detailed to cover multiple bookmaker shops in Waterford City. Though she was heavily pregnant with their second child, Queally’s partner, Avril, travelled to Manchester and made numerous discreet bets in bookmakers’ shops there.
After arriving at Limerick racecourse, Queally got his stable lad Dylan Phelan to go into the centre with the intention to pair Rocky’s Diamond and Diamond Nora in each-way doubles at morning prices. At the Ladbroke office, he had €30 each way on Diamond Nora at 128-1 and Rocky’s Diamond at 80-1. “I told Dylan to back a couple of greyhounds. They’ll think, ‘This fellow’s into dogs, he’s obviously a total mug.’ Then back some horse on the all-weather and when you’re placing your real bet, make it one of three separate bets and put it at the bottom of the three.
“Dylan also did **** and Paddy Power.”
Trainer Declan Queally standing on a gallop at Curraghmore Estate.
Ladbrokes’ initial refusal to pay out left a sour taste for Queally
Morgan Treacy/Inpho
Though they were listed at ridiculously long odds, Queally believed Rocky’s Diamond and Diamond Nora would win. Shortly before getting on their horses, the jockeys, Shane Fitzgerald and Kevin Sexton, were told to ride their horses positively because they had good chances. Both horses went to the front early and were never headed. The other fancied Queally horses didn’t do as well; Olympy De Cerisy was second and Manatee Du Brizais unseated his rider.
Because Rocky’s Diamond and Diamond Nora were backed at long odds, Queally says the plan worked well. “We got around a hundred grand out of the bookmakers at the racecourse Limerick. We got €80k out of Ballinrobe. Avril went back to Manchester to collect her winnings and came home with £75k. We got €50k out of Waterford.
“We took €100k off Ladbrokes, €100k off **** and €40k off Paddy Power. Overall we cleared around €500,000.”
Every bookmaker paid up except Ladbrokes. Queally says the firm’s initial refusal to honour the bet left a sour taste. Ladbrokes said that as the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) had opened an investigation into the improvement shown by Rocky’s Diamond and Diamond Nora, their withholding of the winnings was in line with their policy. As the IHRB couldn’t see that Queally had done anything wrong, the investigation dragged on while going nowhere.
“The horses had won, they’d passed their drug tests,” Queally says. “There’s never any investigation the night you lose. We pulled it off. And Ladbrokes need to stand back and have a look at themselves and say that we are the people working in racing and we are the ones riding out the horses. So we do have that inside information, we know when our horses are fully fit and in good form. And if you are working in racing you’re entitled to that information. They need to stand up and say, ‘Right, we got caught.’
“You can’t go cry-babying back to the IHRB because there’s no one investigating why Johnny-up-the-road with a gambling problem does 50 or 60 quid every day. Is there anyone there to save him?
“Don’t moan about it because we lose too. I recall going up to Kilbeggan, having €5,000 on a horse that lost. I have a couple of big bets a year. I’m not afraid to bet. Even though I’m not an addict gambler, I like the challenge of making the bookies cry. That is something that’s on my mind a lot. I’m plotting and planning all the time, waiting for my chance to get them. And if I get them, they have to grace the mahogany.”
Twelve months after walking into Ladbrokes in Limerick and having a €30 each-way double on 128-1 and 80-1 winners, the bookmaker had still not paid up. Phelan complained publicly. There was no sympathy for Ladbrokes’ position. At the odds listed on the winning docket, the payout should have been €316k, but the bookmaker said that under their terms and conditions, the maximum payout for the bet struck by Phelan was €100k.
Feeling the heat of public disapproval, Ladbrokes wilted. “I was in Fairyhouse shortly after the thing went public,” Queally says. “One of the lads who works for Ladbrokes came up to me: ‘Will you take a hundred grand for the bet?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll take a hundred grand for the bet.’ ”
So Ladbrokes belatedly did its duty and Queally got to pay off his debts. He says he’s still on the lookout, waiting for the next opportunity.
Racing trainer Declan Queally dreamt of one day pulling off gambling coup like one that had earned Barney Curley nearly £4million. In the spring of 2024, things fell into place
Trainer Declan Queally leans on a white rail beside the Curraghmore Estate Gallops in County Waterford.
Queally on the Curraghmore gallops where he supervises training for the family-run operation
Morgan Treacy/Inpho
David Walsh
David Walsh, Chief Sports Writer
Saturday June 06 2026, 5.30pm, The Sunday Times
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• 17:24 min
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One evening in 1953 a 14-year-old boy, on holidays from his boarding school in Monaghan town, was asked by his father to take a greyhound to a race in Lifford, Co Donegal. The family lived in Irvinestown, Co Fermanagh, and the lad was roped in because his father was taking another dog to Celtic Park in Belfast. Ernest McCaffrey, a local taxi driver and family friend, would take the boy and the animal to the Donegal track.
Before leaving Irvinestown, the boy was handed a ball of raw meat by his father. “Give this to the dog when you reach Strabane,” he was told. Strabane in Co Tyrone is just three miles from Lifford. The reason for the pre-race meal was not discussed, but the boy had figured it out. He wasn’t what you might call an average 14-year-old.
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It took an hour or so to get from Irvinestown to Strabane. Sitting with the greyhound in the back of McCaffrey’s taxi, different thoughts struck the boy. What if he didn’t give the dog his pre-race meal? Well, the dog would probably win. From observing his father on his journey from successful businessman to hopeless professional gambler, the boy had worked out the meatball would stop the dog winning.
Black and white close-up of Irish professional gambler Barney Curley wearing a fedora and looking to the left.
The trainer and professional gambler Curley in 1984
Getty images
Knowing this, he had a choice. He could do what he was told to do or … Not to serve the meatball to the dog would be to betray his father. The boy chose betrayal.
It wasn’t straightforward. McCaffrey, the taxi driver, knew about the nutritional arrangements and around Strabane, the boy felt he was being watched through the rearview mirror. Cupping his empty hand and bringing it to the dog’s mouth, he pretended to feed him the meatball. “There’s a good dog.”
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Before the start of the race, the boy checked the bookies’ prices. His dog was 6-1. Familiar with the jargon, he walked up to one of the bookmakers and said he would have £12 to £2. His charge duly won and the boy left Lifford that evening with £14 in his pocket. For a 14-year-old in 1953, this was a small fortune.
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Coming from their different tracks, father and son got back in Irvinestown around midnight.
“How did you get on,” the dad asked.
“He won,” the boy replied.
“He couldn’t have won.”
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“Oh yes. Five or six lengths.”
Upset by the news, the older one thought about the man who’d supplied the tablet concealed in the meatball. “The fool’s given me the wrong pills,” he said, and nothing would do but to call round to the man’s house at this ridiculously late hour and berate him for a mistake he’d not made.
The boy and his father would share many years after this eventful evening, have conversations about dogs, horses and gambling. With ample opportunity to do so, the boy never confessed to his father what he’d done that evening in Lifford.
Race horse trainer Barney Curley tipping his hat to the camera at a racetrack, surrounded by other spectators.
Curley was motivated not so much by money as by a wish to put one over the bookmakers
Times Newspapers Ltd
While you wonder if the boy was within his rights to withhold the meatball, consider what became of him afterwards. His first ambition was to devote his life to God and as a teenager he entered a seminary at Mungret College in Limerick and spent four years studying to be a Jesuit priest. After falling to tuberculosis, he took time out to recover and never returned.
Instead his life followed a different path. You could say he went back to a first love; using his wits to outsmart bookmakers. Barney Curley was his name and he became one of the shrewdest professional gamblers to have backed a horse in the UK and Ireland. Like a military general, he meticulously planned his coups and won a lot. Never was it about the money. Rather it was those that he saw as the enemy; big bookmaking firms.
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In later life he would look on his days as a successful gambler and consider that he devoted a lot of time to something that didn’t amount to much. So, in the autumn of his life, he founded the charity Data (Direct Aid for Africa) and began raising money for important projects in Zambia. From the well-off in racing he got funding. For the much less well-off in Zambia, he built a school and a hospital.
The faith that underpinned Curley’s desire to be a Jesuit priest remained a central part of his life. In Newmarket, where he lived until his death in 2021, he was a daily mass goer. People said if he wasn’t at mass, he must be in Africa.
As for the story about the greyhound and the meatball, we know this to be true because Curley told it to his biographer Nick Townsend, who retold it in his book, The Sure Thing: The Greatest Coup in Horse Racing History.
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On Friday morning, April 19, 2024, Declan Queally had a lot on his mind. He was then a 36-year-old amateur jockey and an assistant trainer to his father Declan Sr. They have a small, mostly family-run operation at Curraghmore in Co Waterford. Declan Sr is a grafter. Harrows the gallops, takes care of the feeding and talks to the owner.
Declan Jr supervises the training of the horses, makes the call on where they run, travels to the races and will often drive the horse box. That Friday was a big day for Declan Queally. They had seven horses running; four at Limerick and three at Ballinrobe. Declan thought a few of them had a good chance of winning but kept that thought very much to himself.
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A lot of planning had gone into the day because even if the horses won, the prize money wasn’t going to be enough. They are a selling yard. Find a nice young horse, win a race, sell it on at a profit. It’s a well-worn route to survival for small operations. But around this time, the market slowed and Declan was stuck with a number of horses in which he had a 50 per cent stake.
We are sitting in the kitchen of his home in Ballinroad, Co Waterford, because I have long been intrigued by what happened on that Friday in April 2024. And he agreed to explain. “Because we had not been able to sell a few horses, I suddenly had a bit of debt. Maybe €60k or €70k with Goffs, the same with Tattersalls. Another fairly big amount with Red Mills, the feed company. Add a few more smaller bills and you wouldn’t be far off €200k.
Declan Queally, partner Avril Murphy, and children Molly and Ross at Curraghmore Estate Gallops.
Queally with his daughter Molly, son Ross and partner Avril Murphy, who went to Manchester to make a series of discreet bets on the yard’s horses
Morgan Treacy/Inpho
“So there was pressure. I was under pressure because these bills were due to be paid. We pay all our bills, always. But paying ’em back, grand by grand every month, would’ve been painful, even though I would’ve done it. But I thought there had to be a better way of doing this.”
Twenty years before, Declan Queally was sent from his Co Waterford home to Newmarket for the summer holidays. His parents had looked up to Barney Curley and believed a few months working for the trainer would teach him a lot. His older brother Tom, who would become famous as Frankel’s jockey, had already teamed up with Curley and was riding plenty of winners.
And that year, 2004, Curley gave 16-year-old Declan his first winning ride, Cristoforo at Windsor. In 2010 Curley organised what many believe was the greatest gambling coup ever attempted in Britain. Four horses at three different racecourses and a military-like operation to get as much money as possible on all four, backing them in single bets, doubles, trebles and accumulators.
Advertisement
Three of the four horses won and when Curley and his men did their audit afterwards, they’d made a £3.9million profit. Declan Queally rode two of the four horses; winning on the first, Savaronola, and losing on the second, Sommersturm, who was sent off a 1-3 favourite. “Next morning we have a debrief meeting in the staff house. Barney came in, **** in his mouth. ‘Well, we got on well yesterday and you know what I love about this game, boys, and it tells you about horses. The one that I thought was the biggest certainty was the one that got beaten.’
“‘Declan,’ he said to me, ‘I made almost £4million yesterday and if that 1-3 favourite that you got beaten on had won, it would have been £20million. But don’t you be letting that play on your mind now. The horse wasn’t good enough. I hear a couple of people saying that you gave him too much to do. That horse ran in the German Derby three years ago. He should have been able to jump off a minute after those horses in Wolverhampton and still beaten them.’ ”
Trainer Declan Queally holding a saddle next to a horse at Curraghmore Estate Gallops.
Secrecy is key to pulling off a betting coup and even the staff at the yard have to be kept in the dark
Morgan Treacy/Inpho
What Declan learnt from Curley was the need for secrecy. “Barney didn’t want any of his staff to know what he was planning. If he was preparing two horses for a gamble, he might get up at four in the morning and work the horses before the staff got in. At six, when the staff came in, he’d say to the head lad, ‘Just put those two on the walker, they’re a bit off colour.’ So no one was able to see the plan.”
Queally dreamt of one day pulling off a Curley-like coup. And in the spring of 2024, things fell into place.
Breaker - Generic
The year had begun quietly. His horses weren’t performing and he wondered if there was a bit of sickness in the yard. As the weather improved, his horses began to look better. There were two novice hurdlers that he liked, the gelding Rocky’s Diamond and the mare Diamond Nora. They’d performed disappointingly in maiden hurdles — races for horses that have never won — but Queally knew they were better than those runs suggested.
Around this time, he noticed something odd in the way horses were priced up in maiden hurdles. “I said to my father at one stage, ‘I can see a trend watching the betting for these races,’ and how some horses were going off at criminal prices after finishing mid-division in a maiden hurdle. There’s no one saying the horse is no good, no one saying that there’s anything wrong with the horse.
“Just because the horse has finished down the field in two maiden hurdles, the bookie’s algorithm then decides the horse is just running to get his handicap mark, therefore isn’t going to be trying too hard to win the race. Presuming this, the bookies then offer these huge odds, 100-1 and more, to get people backing horses the bookmakers believe are only running to get handicapped. This is even more the case in maiden hurdles the week before the Punchestown Festival in late May.
Rocky’s Diamond with Shane Fitzgerald jumping over a hurdle, leading another horse in a race.
Rocky’s Diamond was backed at odds of up to 100-1 by Queally’s team and promptly romped home at Limerick
Patrick McCann/racing post
“They presume most trainers don’t want to win a maiden the week before Punchestown because that’s when the season ends and any horse winning a maiden at that time is going to get a high handicap mark and can’t compete as a novice the following season. The bookies had fallen into the trap of presuming that a week before Punchestown, most horses running in maiden hurdles were just looking to get a good handicap mark.
“I had two nice young horses, Rocky’s Diamond and Diamond Nora, who’d been disappointing in February and March but then turned a corner in early April. I’d got Diamond Nora’s wind done and they were both starting to work well. I thought that if we could back them at these ridiculously long prices, it would be worth sacrificing their novice seasons.”
Of the seven horses that went to Limerick and Ballinrobe on that Friday, Queally thought four of them could be backed. Rocky’s Diamond, Diamond Nora, Olympy De Cerisy and Manatee Du Brizais. He’d set aside €8,000 (about £7,000) in cash and drawn up a plan to get the money on without alerting the bookmakers to what was happening, so that bets could be placed at the best possible odds.
“To every owner, I say the same thing. We are a gambling stable and if we think your horse has a chance of winning, no one else will be told and you will be told just ten minutes before the race. So the owner must be at the races every time the horse runs. I tell them, ‘If you want to try to sting the bookies, you have to do it late, because 50 quid the night before is going to just ruin everything.’
“Five minutes before Rocky’s Diamond’s race in Limerick, I was keeping an eye on things in the ring and on one board he was 100-1, 80-1 on another. I had a friend in the ring, a big punter well known to the bookmakers who bets in cash, and because he’s a regular client, they’d accept his bets. He wins plenty, he loses plenty and he knows how much he’d be able to get on with the different bookmakers.
Declan Queally and connections of Rocky’s Diamond pose for a photo with the horse and jockey after winning the race.
Connections of Rocky’s Diamond enjoy the horse’s victory in the John Mulhern Galmoy Hurdle last year — when he was sent off at 5-1 rather than the huge price which cost the bookies a fortune in 2024
Morgan Treacy/Inpho
“He’s got my money and he’s going to get on as much as he can at the best possible prices. He struck one bet, €250 each way on Rocky’s Diamond at 100-1. That’s €30,000 on one bet if the horse were to win.”
The bookmaker Colm White, who was working at Limerick that evening, says: “That was Johnny O’Mahony doing the betting for Declan. We were always going to do business with Johnny.”
O’Mahony was one piece in the jigsaw. Queally had another punter working on his behalf at Ballinrobe races, where his job was to get as much as he could on Diamond Nora. Other trusted friends were detailed to cover multiple bookmaker shops in Waterford City. Though she was heavily pregnant with their second child, Queally’s partner, Avril, travelled to Manchester and made numerous discreet bets in bookmakers’ shops there.
After arriving at Limerick racecourse, Queally got his stable lad Dylan Phelan to go into the centre with the intention to pair Rocky’s Diamond and Diamond Nora in each-way doubles at morning prices. At the Ladbroke office, he had €30 each way on Diamond Nora at 128-1 and Rocky’s Diamond at 80-1. “I told Dylan to back a couple of greyhounds. They’ll think, ‘This fellow’s into dogs, he’s obviously a total mug.’ Then back some horse on the all-weather and when you’re placing your real bet, make it one of three separate bets and put it at the bottom of the three.
“Dylan also did **** and Paddy Power.”
Trainer Declan Queally standing on a gallop at Curraghmore Estate.
Ladbrokes’ initial refusal to pay out left a sour taste for Queally
Morgan Treacy/Inpho
Though they were listed at ridiculously long odds, Queally believed Rocky’s Diamond and Diamond Nora would win. Shortly before getting on their horses, the jockeys, Shane Fitzgerald and Kevin Sexton, were told to ride their horses positively because they had good chances. Both horses went to the front early and were never headed. The other fancied Queally horses didn’t do as well; Olympy De Cerisy was second and Manatee Du Brizais unseated his rider.
Because Rocky’s Diamond and Diamond Nora were backed at long odds, Queally says the plan worked well. “We got around a hundred grand out of the bookmakers at the racecourse Limerick. We got €80k out of Ballinrobe. Avril went back to Manchester to collect her winnings and came home with £75k. We got €50k out of Waterford.
“We took €100k off Ladbrokes, €100k off **** and €40k off Paddy Power. Overall we cleared around €500,000.”
Every bookmaker paid up except Ladbrokes. Queally says the firm’s initial refusal to honour the bet left a sour taste. Ladbrokes said that as the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) had opened an investigation into the improvement shown by Rocky’s Diamond and Diamond Nora, their withholding of the winnings was in line with their policy. As the IHRB couldn’t see that Queally had done anything wrong, the investigation dragged on while going nowhere.
“The horses had won, they’d passed their drug tests,” Queally says. “There’s never any investigation the night you lose. We pulled it off. And Ladbrokes need to stand back and have a look at themselves and say that we are the people working in racing and we are the ones riding out the horses. So we do have that inside information, we know when our horses are fully fit and in good form. And if you are working in racing you’re entitled to that information. They need to stand up and say, ‘Right, we got caught.’
“You can’t go cry-babying back to the IHRB because there’s no one investigating why Johnny-up-the-road with a gambling problem does 50 or 60 quid every day. Is there anyone there to save him?
“Don’t moan about it because we lose too. I recall going up to Kilbeggan, having €5,000 on a horse that lost. I have a couple of big bets a year. I’m not afraid to bet. Even though I’m not an addict gambler, I like the challenge of making the bookies cry. That is something that’s on my mind a lot. I’m plotting and planning all the time, waiting for my chance to get them. And if I get them, they have to grace the mahogany.”
Twelve months after walking into Ladbrokes in Limerick and having a €30 each-way double on 128-1 and 80-1 winners, the bookmaker had still not paid up. Phelan complained publicly. There was no sympathy for Ladbrokes’ position. At the odds listed on the winning docket, the payout should have been €316k, but the bookmaker said that under their terms and conditions, the maximum payout for the bet struck by Phelan was €100k.
Feeling the heat of public disapproval, Ladbrokes wilted. “I was in Fairyhouse shortly after the thing went public,” Queally says. “One of the lads who works for Ladbrokes came up to me: ‘Will you take a hundred grand for the bet?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll take a hundred grand for the bet.’ ”
So Ladbrokes belatedly did its duty and Queally got to pay off his debts. He says he’s still on the lookout, waiting for the next opportunity.
Thanks for your efforts Mr.Combustible.
Barney was indeed a mass of contradictions
Barney was indeed a mass of contradictions
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